


Just Another Word

by StarlightLion



Series: Marked, Attuned, and Awakened [1]
Category: Thief (Video Game 2014)
Genre: A huge pile of problem, Also this is pre-canon, Are y'all fuckin prepared, Gen, I have a problem guys, JUST, Mild Blood, Now it's LOTS of oneshots, WHOOOO AGAIN, also just... serious yelling, oneshots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-07-28 15:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16244270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightLion/pseuds/StarlightLion
Summary: Garrett has never wanted an apprentice.He gets one.He does not know if he regrets it.Or:The place where my pre-gameplay oneshots and drabbles go to die. Everything within is considered canon to the MAA series.Not necessarily in chronological order.





	1. Safe Is To Lonely

**Author's Note:**

> All aboard the I Made Myself Sad train, and here is your complimentary Now I Will Make You Sad Too.

Garrett has never wanted an apprentice.

He is twenty three years old when he gets one.

Garrett has never known exactly how old he really is; it’s never mattered. The orphanage gave him an age and a birthday, and he knows at least one of those is false. Before they decided he was ten years old, he had already escaped them. But, however hard he tries to bury those memories, once a year - every year - Garrett climbs the tallest building in The City and wonders if he’d survive the fall.

It is not one of those nights when he first meets her. He is, as far as his fake birthday is concerned, twenty three years old and has been for almost a season - and will be for three more. Garrett has never wanted an apprentice of his own, but he understands the theory of it well enough. After all, as talented a child as he was, even he needed the refinement of experience. It has only been two years since his master disappeared, and he has not spent his time searching. He has known since he was apprenticed that one day, Master Amber would be gone.

The Clocktower is still new, relatively speaking, barely five years old, but it has served well as his home for three. He remembers, with some fondness, being reluctant to encroach on the worksite - and being shown, in no uncertain way, that men of the day can be frightened into obedience by the simplest of shadows, and one virulent rumour of ghosts. It was one of Master Amber’s many talents, that he remembers her with warmth; and a measure of her fearsome skills that he has, not once, forgotten her instruction.

So, two years after she never returned, he has not once searched for her.

And if it is lonely - well, lonely is just another word for safe.

Garrett has never wanted an apprentice, and he meets her when she tries to pick his pockets. She is, after a fashion, precocious - but that is just another word for stupid. It begins as a simple game of chase; he wanders through The City’s sleeping rooftops, and there is a step out of place, a breath taken too quick. He pauses, at the edge of a roof, pretending to study the streets below. Varies his breathing, disrupts the even inhalations with a particularly long exhale, pauses too long between, takes several breaths too sharply. He is careful to do this sparingly, and he does not hold his breath - it is important that his blood doesn’t rush in his ears.

His shadow, if it can be called that, loses the game. Unable to predict his breathing, theirs returns to low and even; cunning, if not particularly clever. Better to be as silent as possible, if they cannot match their breathing to his.

Without looking around, Garrett stands again and slips off to another roof. His shadow stays too close - he can all but feel the wooden slats shift as they follow him. Light on their feet, sure enough, but he hears the swish of their clothes and when he leads them on a quick circuit of the docks, he hears their footsteps even over those below.

So he stops, in a tangle of buildings that protect them from wandering eyes but dip down in the only kind of valley he has ever known; rooftops and slanted walls of houses and tradehouses that were built without thought to those already existing, or those that later might. He perches up against a thin wooden railing, leans over slightly. Twists his weight, just enough to knock his cloak to the side and expose a pouch at his hip.

Garrett sets the trap, and waits.

It does not take long.

He sees the shadow first - a flicker of motion from the corner of his eye, slipping across to his level. He is careful not to turn his head, in fact he glances briefly in the other direction before returning to staring across the way and down, as if he is casing the building; and he watches the shadow move until it is behind him. They’re wearing the right colours - dark, but not black, and mottled - but not the right shape, not the right cut. The clothes are loose, too loose, on their body.

Heavy and cold, Garrett chooses not to think about the likely reason why.

He hears them approach, next. Cautious steps, uneven - starting and stopping, waiting for him to notice or turn at any moment. Wasting time. Wary of being caught; but in this, wary is just another word for insecure. Were he not aware of them, then every second’s delay is a second in which he might become so.

Now, they get close. He feels their proximity - not in so many senses, but it prickles on the back of his neck, and his palms itch as if threatened. He shifts slightly, hears them freeze, their breath stop. Foolish. The sudden cessation of a sound is as much a startle as the introduction of it.

But he does not turn, not yet. Garrett waits until he feels the tiny change in weight as the shadow touches the pouch. In reality, it is so miniscule that he cannot feel it true, but it tickles in the same way their presence does, something that only experience and hyperalertness brings.

In that moment, Garrett abandons all pretense of ignorance, drops a hand to grasp their wrist and spins them both, until they are pressed against the railing. His other hand lifts, curls around their throat, and pushes back even as he pulls on the wrist and steps in close, close enough that they almost touch. He makes sure to stand on one of their feet and press down. His weight is scant, but the kind of thief who would try and steal from another thief - and especially _him_ \- is not the kind of thief Garrett fears.

They are either very new, or very desperate, and either way Garrett is not threatened.

A young woman stares back at him, eyes wide and dark, and there is surprise there, a hint of anger. No fear.

“You know,” Garrett drawls quietly, tilting his head and tightening his fingers around her throat slightly, “generally, you should only steal from marks who _don’t_ know you’re there.” A short hum. “So, in your case, you shouldn’t steal.”

“Let me go,” she snarls back, and she tugs on her wrist but she doesn’t otherwise struggle. Her eyes are fixed on Garrett’s face, unblinking; she does not know how to fight. Brawling is not exactly Garrett’s forte, but Master Amber was not kind in a spar and he has at least learned to defend himself. If she has the mind, she can break this hold in a hundred different ways, but his fingers tighten and she dares not.

“I wasn’t aware I was taking requests,” he responds, injecting surprise into his voice. Finally, her eyes flick down - to her side, the same side on which Garrett holds her wrist, but she doesn’t look there. Garrett follows her gaze, does a quick sweep. Dull metal peeks through the folds of her too-loose shirt where it hangs to her thigh; a blade.

Garrett feels a flicker of something in his chest. _Lucky,_ to have grabbed the correct hand, that the woman is apparently left-handed or at least stupid enough to have her dagger on her left thigh. Then again, Master Amber’s voice in his head, lucky is just another word for _good._

He hums again. “Your technique is sloppy.”

“Fuck you!” she snaps back, as if he’s offended her.

“Thanks, but no.” Rage ignites in her eyes, and he knows that now his fingers are tight enough on her throat to be uncomfortable. She opens her mouth to breathe. “If you’d preyed on a lesser thief, you might have actually gotten close,” he offers instead - and it is mocking, but it is also true. She lacks all signs of training, reminds himself of how Master Amber found him - not that he was brazen enough to try and steal from a thief.

Of course, brazen is just another word for reckless, and his problem had been the opposite of reckless.

But that means that what she _has_ gotten right, she has gotten right from observation or instinct alone. “Are you going to kill me?” she asks now, and the rage has cooled to something harder in her eyes - her voice cold and even. Garrett’s eyes narrow, and all at once he releases her and steps back, out of her reach. For a moment, she simply stares.

“Find yourself a master, before you find yourself a noose.” He turns to leave, leaps up to the abused balcony that marks the beginning of his climb, listening for the sound of attack over the faint creak of wood taking his weight and the movement of his cloak. It does not come.

Instead, she calls after him. “Wait!” Not yet a shout, but loud enough to set his teeth on edge. He turns, crouched on the balcony, and glares at her. She takes a step closer. “How did you know I was there?”

“Do you want that in alphabetical order, or chronological?”

She blinks, taken aback, and then comes closer again. She cannot be older than eighteen, if that. “Teach me, then.” When he snorts and turns away to continue climbing, she calls after him again. “Hey! You just said I should find a master. You’re a thief, you can teach me.”

“Why would I waste my time?” he asks her - and finds himself wanting an answer. She is very different to how he was, older and sharper and far more arrogant _(another word for suicidal)_ but there are traces of it in her, echoes of talents that are raw and unrestrained… but promising.

The anger flashes across her face again, and her hand twitches for her blade, but she only walks close until she is under the balcony and looks up at him. “You just said that I have talent.”

At this, he scoffs. “Really? I must have forgotten.”

She glares. “Don’t be a cunt. You wouldn’t have told me to get a teacher if you didn’t think I could do it.”

“I don’t even know you.”

“Erin.”

He stares at her, taken aback. “What?”

“My name. It’s Erin. Now you know me. So teach me how to steal then.” There is still the anger, in her face, but there is also something so steadfast and cocksure that Garrett wants to laugh. Arrogant is only just another word for _dead,_ but there is something refreshing about it. In this, her refusal to fear him, she reminds him of Master Amber. Only too much, what little interaction he has with others is naught but challenge and scorn.

He crouches again, leans slightly over the edge of the balcony to consider her. “I seem to recall telling you this was _not_ your dream job.” She only glares back, and the silence stretches on for a minute - two. While he is perfectly content to wait, she begins to fidget and her gaze flickers around them, but she remains silent. When Garrett is convinced that perhaps there is some self-control to be teased from her after all, he tilts his head. “Why do you want to be a thief?”

It’s only when the words are out of his mouth that Garrett realises he’s actually considering this. An uncomfortable tension settles in his stomach, and for the first time he wonders if Master Amber ever actually _wanted_ an apprentice before she picked him up. Perhaps all foolishness is cyclical after all.

Erin glances away, scowling, but when she looks back she offers him a shrug. “Because it’s fun, and fuck everybody else.”

They stare at each other for a long time.

“Okay. Keep up.”

Garrett does not wait for her, but he hears her scramble up behind him and she follows him across The City, all the way back through Stonemarket and towards the Old Quarter. He listens to her footsteps as they become uneven, listens to her breathing slowly become ragged, but he does not ease his pace for her sake. He hears her fall behind, and - once - lose him entirely, but it takes Erin only a minute to find him again. It is, granted, almost cheating while he flies through the Highway and makes only minimal effort to conceal his noise; just enough not to shake the houses they run over.

All the same… promise.

He takes her to the safehouse that was once his, before Master Amber convinced him to steal the whole damn Clocktower. Erin scrambles up minutes after him, heaves herself through the window, and remains on her feet despite panting and sweating desperately. She does not glare, when he remains leaning against the wall with folded arms and an impatient stare.

She leaves bloody footprints, when she takes several steps closer, away from the open window. “I almost… lost you,” she admits between gulps of air.

“I heard.”

“But I didn’t,” she adds, and it is not pride in her voice but a rough tension that asks him to focus on that, and not her mistake.

He hums. “How old are you?” Erin doesn’t seem convinced that it’s a pertinent question, but she answers anyway - he was right. Eighteen. “When I was your age,” and he ignores the fact that was a measly five years ago, “I’d been with my Master for seven years. You can’t even keep up freerunning half The City in one direction. Can you pick locks? Appraise the best objects to steal? Fire a bow?”

Shaking her head, Erin admits that she cannot, but she does not let Garrett dismiss her afterwards. Instead, she takes another step closer - and she doesn’t betray any of the pain she must be in as her feet bleed. “I’m a quick study. How long did it take _you_ to pick a lock? I’ll do it twice as fast.”

He considers her. Eager to learn is not a bad quality, but he has no use for meaningless claims. “It doesn’t matter how fast you learn if you get yourself killed first. You want me to teach you? You do as I say, without hesitation or complaint. Got it?”

“Got it.”

Again, he hums. “Okay. This place is yours, now. You don’t leave it without me.” He walks past her, half climbs out of the window, and is pleased when she stays silent. “Bandage your feet, eat something, and get some sleep. I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

He leaves.

Garrett has never wanted an apprentice, but now that he has one, he will teach her the same way Master Amber taught him. Silently, as he makes his way back across The City to the Clocktower, he wonders if this is the truth of all thieves.

The next night, he returns to Erin’s safehouse with a spare set of lockpicks and a simple lockbox, and gets to work.

 

* * *

 

Erin, it turns out, is indeed a quick study. True to her word, she masters even complex lockpicking twice as fast as Garrett did. It takes her longer to master the art of stealth, and she never quite gets the hang of archery. She is sharp witted and even sharper tongued, and once she is convinced that Garrett will not simply abandon her she matches his every glib comment with a scathing one of her own. It does not take long for her to learn from him all she can about fighting, and she begins to win their sparring matches more often than not.

Sometimes, Garrett feels pride swell in his chest as he watches his apprentice become a skilled thief, when she executes difficult heists without ever needing him to interfere as he ghosts her. Even more, the times that she detects him doing so.

Sometimes, instead, he regrets turning her into someone that might actually be formidable, because she is talented and now she has refined that into skill - but she is still reckless, and it is the kindest word he has for stupid.

She improves in leaps and bounds, and it takes only a year before she asks him about taking a half-abandoned mill near the docks for her own. He shows her the same tricks Master Amber showed him to take the Clocktower, and within half a season she has properly installed herself, warded off most nosy visitors, and created an elaborate warning system for intruders. Erin has never mastered engineering, but she has an eye for traps and her hands are quicker than anyone’s.

Well. Save Garrett’s, of course.

She fights him, when he tries to teach her the _why_ s. Resists his reasoning, and does not care for his lessons in theory. It is not that she doesn’t listen, he reminds himself every time he wants to throttle her, for she recites well enough what he teaches - but teaching anything in theory is like extracting teeth, and she makes the effort all the more painful with arguments and dismissal. Garrett does not expect her to blindly agree, but eventually it becomes so frustrating that he gives up.

When they argue, it comes to blows more than once, and Garrett wins as often as he loses and even then sometimes it comes to aiming an arrow in her face. He never threatens her with lethal arrows - Master Amber’s voice has never left him: _“Only aim at something if you’re willing to fire.”_ \- but Erin has experienced the choking powder before, and even a blunt arrow to the face is painful. If he wins, he leaves Erin to the mill for days at a time, even if he suspects she has long since stopped obeying the instruction not to venture out without either his presence or permission. If Erin wins, she sneers and gets her way, and Garrett doesn’t bring it up again.

She has not called him ‘Master’ in two years.

Five years after taking her on as his apprentice, Garrett finally reaches breaking point.

And he breaks spectacularly.

It is not a simple job, getting into the courthouse. It is especially not-simple to sneak into the cells housed underneath it and steal a signet ring from the sleeping hand of a disgraced noble son - but the coin is good and already half paid, so Garrett gathers his tools and his apprentice and accepts the job anyway. It tingles under his skin, the challenge of it, even as he keeps one eye on Erin and _dreads._

He doesn’t worry that she will screw up, exactly; she is no longer a rookie, and hasn’t been for a long time. But she is, as she has always been, _arrogant_ \- and Garrett knows only too well that one day, it will be the death of her. It will, he knows only too well, very likely be the death of him as well.

And in the end, a shame that he will likely never forget, it’s his own mistake that costs them everything.

It’s a single second of miscalculation. Garrett is not perfect, and he has always made sure to try and teach Erin that. Mistakes will happen, no matter how skilled they become, no matter how much better than everyone Erin thinks she is. So, when Garrett swoops through a lit hall from one darkened room to another, he knows before he is even spotted that he has royally fucked up.

He moves on Erin’s tail, unwilling to leave her alone in this, and while it is her movement that attracts attention she has learned his speed and she’s gone by the time the guard turns around. In her place, Garrett knows he’s in full light exposure, and even as he slides into the shadows, he expects the alarm to go up.

Instead, a flicker of shadow over his head and the flash of a blade, and he doesn’t understand at first, when he catches his weight on the balls of his feet and spins on his own momentum to look back out at the guard who _definitely_ saw him and _isn’t_ shouting about it. He sees, eyes wide and collapsing, the guard choke on Erin’s dagger where it’s lodged in his throat.

Garrett is still, even as Erin darts out and catches the guard before he hits the ground. She grunts and staggers under his weight, looks around with incredulous anger in her eyes. “A little help?” she snaps, dragging the dead guard a step back. Without a heartbeat, he won’t bleed a lot but his throat is still sliced open and they can’t afford his blood on the floor to alert his kin.

That’s the logic in Garrett’s brain as he darts out to help drag him into the darkened room, it’s the _only_ thought as he does, and there’s no lucidity to it. Instinct and training take over, and Garrett helps Erin hide the body because they are trespassers and they cannot leave evidence of their presence out in the open.

But it sunders when they have, and Erin straightens up and offers a sarcastic, “Nice going, Garrett.” He feels it like a physical thing, like whiplash - like the crack of a wooden ruler to the ribs.

He’s moved before he even realises, and the _snap_ of his backhand echoes only in his own ears. It stings in his hand just as much as it must sting on Erin’s face, and it takes an age for her to look back up at him - eyes wide, stunned. There’s a strange wetness there, gleaming in the dark, and Garrett does not quite know if it’s in Erin’s eyes, or his own.

“We’re done.” His voice is low and cracked, when he finally forces it out.

“What?” And there’s fear there, now.

“Job’s over. We’re leaving.”

And he doesn’t remark on the shadow of relief that crosses Erin’s face, and he doesn’t remark on _anything_ as they leave a corpse behind in absolute silence. He does not mean to take her to the Clocktower - after all, he is her Master and he has the same secrets from her as Master Amber did from him, and where he lives is one of them - but the silence is _thunderous_ by the time they reach it. Garrett cannot even bring himself to care as they scale the tower and Erin learns one too many secrets, because his own head is empty but for a hollow ringing static that makes him feel unhinged.

He doesn’t let her come down from the wide sill. When she tries, he turns and takes a step back closer, ripping his mask down from his face and his hood back from his hair, and whatever his face looks like it is enough to stop her in her tracks.

“... Garrett?” She sounds uncertain, because she has never seen him like this. What she does not sound is remorseful.

It coalesces inside him, the piercing silent howl, and he fixes her in an unblinking glare. “I was wrong.”

“What?”

“I was wrong. I should have-” _left you to the noose,_ is what flits through Garrett’s mind, but even now he cannot bring himself to mean it. That, after all, is the whole point. “I’m cutting you loose.”

And now it is fear, that shines in her eyes, and she refuses to understand. “What do you mean, cutting me loose?” It strikes Garrett like a blow to the gut, that fear; and for all that she’s espoused she doesn’t need him.

“We’re _done,_ Erin. _I’m_ done. I won’t train you anymore. Now get the fuck out.” It’s snarled, and Garrett clenches his hands and fights for control, to keep his voice steady, to stop his shoulders from shaking. He can smell it, on them - just traces, on his hands and chest, and more on Erin. The blood.

She doesn’t leave. Her expression becomes incredulous, the fear and shock not yet turned to anger. It will take only a minute - Garrett waits. “What? Why?! Because- Because I stopped that guard from raising the damn alarm?” And there, as she raises her voice without restraint - her eyes narrow and her brows slant, and the fear turns to rage.

Garrett feels it almost like his own. It heats, in his chest, a flame so hot it’s blinding, and the thing inside him that snapped earlier offers no resistance and no mitigation, and Garrett takes another step closer and feels it like hands around his throat. “Because you killed a man!” he shouts, not _caring_ that it bounces off the stone and rings dissonant with the deep ticking of the tower, or that it billows out behind Erin and carries through the plaza. “Because you _don’t listen_ and you _don’t care_ and that guard had a life of his own before _you_ decided that he didn’t deserve it!” An accusing finger points at her as he shouts, and then a violent gesture sideways as if trying to obliterate that decision.

But he can’t. There is no undoing what Erin’s done.

“I was _protecting_ you!” Erin yells back, and now Garrett takes a step away. She means it, he sees, and it makes him sick.

“There are other ways, Erin! A thousand other ways we could have gotten out of that without murdering a man-!”

“He was a _guard-”_

_“That makes him no less a person than we are!”_

He’s practically roaring now, out of control, and he can’t tell if he’s angrier with Erin or with himself. She killed without hesitation, without even a second thought - it was her _instinct,_ and she doesn’t even regret it. She did it for him, and he thinks that maybe he hates them both for that - and maybe if he’d tried harder, if he hadn’t given up when she scorned his lessons, that maybe she would have a different instinct now.

But she’s not a child, and Garrett is not responsible for her actions - except he is supposed to be her Master, and he is.

Erin takes a step back, now, and Garrett wonders if her heart is beating as fast and painfully as his is. For all that they have fought before - and they have too many times to count - she has never seen Garrett lose control like this. He has snarled and hissed and sneered at her, he has commanded and condescended, but she has never heard him vociferate.

Her eyes look almost black, in the night. “He would have watched us lose our hands or hang, or both, and he wouldn’t have given a single shit if we’re people or not,” she growled. “It’s us versus them, Garrett, it always has been and it always will be. Thieves have to stick together.”

She parrots it back at him, and Garrett feels like he’s been dunked in ice water. That was one of the first things he taught her, watching her try to hold her first lockpicks correctly, right at the start. _Don’t pickpocket other thieves._ For as little as it may be, there is honour amongst thieves.

Now, he bares his teeth at her. _“I_ am a thief. _You_ are a murderer.”

It is, for a moment, as if he has struck her. He has done so many times before, as she has struck him, in sparring and in arguments-turned-fights, but this - they both feel - is different. She stares at him, eyes wide and angry and hurt, the breath knocked out of her, and Garrett glares back.

He will not have murder done in his name. Not even by her.

“You’re an asshole,” she snarls, and she takes a step - two - jumps to attack him, her eyes clouding with the same incandescent fury that has fueled their conflict for five years. Except this time, Garrett feels it erupt in his chest in return, and he can’t _breathe_ through the molten steel that bleeds out into every cavity his body has, he can’t hear a damn thing because it howls in his ears with the voice of his raging heart, and the noise that tears out of his throat cannot even be called a snarl - and Garrett knows that on one count, at least, Erin has been right all along. Humans are, in the end, just animals.

His hands are quicker than hers, and there is no time for her even to leap at him before his bow is held within them. An arrow, drawn and nocked in half a second, and Garrett has pulled the bowstring back to his jaw before she can even fully stop.

For a moment, there is nothing, and then Erin’s eyes drop to the gleam of a bladed arrowhead. Garrett’s hands shake, as she registers the lethality of the threat, and then she looks back up at him. It is not quite fear, in her eyes now.

It’s betrayal.

“So what, Garrett? You’re gonna kill me?”

And his hands still shake, but Erin knows that he is an excellent marksman, and she is close enough to reach out and touch the bow. If he fired, he would not miss.

_“No.”_

For a long minute, neither of them move. Garrett’s arm burns, and the arrowhead weaves slightly as he starts to lose tension in the bow - he cannot hold its full draw weight indefinitely. Part of him whispers quietly that he doesn’t want to, that he shouldn’t even be doing this, because he _is not_ prepared to fire, but still… he holds.

Eventually, Erin steps back. “Fine. You know what? Okay. _Fine._ I don’t need you anyway.” And if her voice cracks, as she turns and all but throws herself out the window to make the climb down, if it’s just bravado - well, then that’s just another word for lying.

Garrett drops the bow with a clatter, finally takes a deep breath and feels it catch and tear in his chest, and then - despite himself - he watches Erin descend from the Clocktower and make her way towards the docks, towards her mill, until she has vanished into the night. When she becomes merely a shadow just two buildings away, despite how fast she runs, Garrett cannot help the twinge of pride in his stomach, and it is agony.

Garrett has never wanted an apprentice - and now that he’s lost one, he thinks he understands why.

And if he leaves his bow on the ground where it fell, if he hurls off his quiver and lets the arrows scatter without regard, if he buries himself face down in his bed and _screams,_ well then it is only because he is finally safe enough to do so.

After all, safe is just another word for lonely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me hug them ugh.  
> EDIT: Now a dead drop for everything that makes me sad about Garrett and Erin before the Primal, basically. And maybe some fluff if I ever get the inspiration and you're all very lucky XD


	2. As Fences To Thieves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A thief needs a fence.
> 
> Erin thinks so, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Choo Choo motherfuckers, the train is back in business.

The letter mocks him, where it lays open on the table by his bed. He stays curled up in his blankets, the early winter creeping into the Clocktower through windows that were never closed, and stares at it.

Garrett’s read the letter a dozen times in the last season - twice that the season before, and again before that. He knows every word on its worn page, is reluctant to touch it again as the folds begin to fray from overhandling; but sitting here, on the bed that they constructed together, is not much better. And he hates it, the way it feels so much harder to drag himself out of it.

It’s not that he misses her, of course. The City winters are bitter, frigid things, and it will only get colder as the days wear on. He is starting to wonder how slick the stones might get with ice, up here around the Clocktower - things he didn’t consider when he took his Master’s word and claimed it for himself. It’s hard to believe the thought hadn’t crossed her mind - Master Amber, after all, had always thought of everything - but then perhaps she’d believed she would be here, Garrett’s first winter in the tower, to help him figure it out. If ever she had a downfall, it was always believing there was a way out.

Sometimes, Garrett knows all too well, there simply isn’t.

So of course it’s not that he misses her. They weren’t that close, after all, always maintaining a careful distance between her life as his Master, and the life of her own. All the same… Garrett will readily admit he wishes for her counsel.

And so, as he has done too many times to count, Garrett reaches for the letter, hisses against the cold air on his skin, and reads her fine, curved hand.

_ Garrett. _

_ I’m doing a solo job, so don’t worry if I’m not around for a few weeks. You have permission to leave home if you want while I’m gone, but  _ **_be careful_ ** _ and for fuck’s sake don’t do anything stupid. No jobs, no risks. Look after yourself, but stay away from Auldale. _

_ If I don’t come back by the end of the season, then I’m not coming back. Don’t look for me. If that happens, you’re free from my obligation - you are a fully capable man. You’ll be fine. _

_ Seek out my fence, Basso, if I don’t return. He’ll take you on. And remember, Garrett, stand on your own feet, not mine. Basso will take you on because  _ **_you_ ** _ are good at what we do, not because of who your Master is. Leave my name out of it. _

_ Wish me luck. _

_ Master Amber. _

It has been three seasons since he woke in the twilight to find the letter on the table. He had not even stirred when Master Amber had left it in her wake. She has not returned. Tonight, Garrett decides, it is time to follow her advice, one last time. For all that she is gone, she has always taught him well and he trusts her judgement. He considers the leathers laid out on the table behind the letter, rakes his eyes over the adjustments and additions he’s made over the years.

Shakes loose the memories.

Before he leaves, he sets fire to the brazier that stands on the second floor, alone but for a single workbench. For a while, he simply watches the flames and feels the heat leach into the leather against his skin, and then - finally - he watches the letter flutter into them with all the grace of a wing-stripped butterfly, and turn to ash.

It doesn’t take very long to learn where he might find Basso the fence, and so he waits, high on the building next to the pub, and observes the traffic in and out. As far as Garrett can tell, it is mostly innocent; legitimate business and legitimate ale. One or two of the patrons that bowl in and stumble out hours later even bear the thick jackets of the Watch. The hours pass, the long dark of winter, and Garrett remains settled and hidden, and tries to decide who Basso might be. There are many candidates, but Garrett dismisses most because they don’t glance towards the shadows, and there is nothing that betrays the wariness even a fence must have.

That is, until it is just past midnight, and the last of the patrons have been harried out of the pub by a man with brown hair and what looks to be a wolfhound. Garrett tenses at the sight of the dog, feels his skin crawl and he edges back slightly, eyeing the animal. Dogs are, historically, not a thief’s friend.

But this one licks its lips as the last straggler leaves and there is no one left to growl at, smooths its fur and lowers the arch of its back, looks up to its master. The man murmurs something Garrett cannot hear and pets the dog’s head; the dog butts against his thigh and offers a low whuffle, and then remains still. If it can scent Garrett on the chill breeze, it makes no sign.

The houndmaster calls the all clear, and Garrett watches the light coming from the cellar flicker. It is a dim thing, and while a shadow has passed the narrow window set at ground level many times over the night, nobody has exited or dared to brave the steps down and enter. Finally, the door opens and up the stairs comes a man who Garrett already knows fits the bill. He watches the dark as he climbs to the houndmaster’s side, glances up into the rooftops - Garrett doesn’t move and waits. He is shrouded and without movement, unlikely to be seen.

Whom Garrett assumes to be Basso sees nothing, and he turns to the houndmaster. His hair is dark black, messed up and drawn back across his head in a way that implies he’s had hands to it all night, dressed to the nines in vest and jacket and the glint of a golden chain looped to a pocket that Garrett’s hands itch to empty. His right hand flashes with rings in the light that spills from the open door - on his left glitters only one. He moves stiffly, as if he’s sore; he’s thin, but not thin like Garrett is, like Master Amber was. He bears the sort of anorexic gauntness that Garrett associates with sickness, and even as he slips to the building nearby and starts to slide down to street level he wonders how much weight must have been lost.

As he gets close, he starts to pick apart their voices, and for a moment he listens.

“... least nobody broke anything tonight. Fights break up quick smart when you got a dog to snarl at them.” An attempt at levity, from the houndmaster. The other merely grunts and rubs his face.

“Sure. Nothing else?”

“Yeah. If I get you something to eat, will you eat it?” Voice soft, low. Garrett frowns, but counts it as suspicions confirmed.

The man shrugs. “No promises, Drathen.”

Sighing, Drathen scratches the dog’s ears idly. “How about you? Anything nefarious to admit?” Another attempt, Garrett suspects, but it is met with naught but another sigh.

“Couple of jobs wanting done. Nothing I’d trust the louts I got with. Waste of shadows, the lot of them.” An edge to his voice there, one that Garrett doesn’t quite understand. The man twists his hands together, toys with the rings.

All the same, Garrett takes the whispered conversation as confirmation and doesn’t wait to hear the rest of it. Instead, he creeps behind them, swears silently when the dog’s ears perk up, and slips himself through the window instead of risking the door. Inside, the cellar is a riot of loose sheafs of paper and old newspapers. A candle glows on the desk, and another is set across the room on a table that stands before a lone couch. There’s another table, at the far end of the cellar, and a safe is set into the wall without concealment - but with a three number combination that Garrett doesn’t know. He’s willing to wager on it being written down, somewhere in the sea of documents that litter every surface, but he has neither the time nor the inclination to hunt.

Oh, he wants to know what’s behind the safe door, so much so that he has to force himself to take his eyes off it, but he’s painfully aware that no fence will take on a thief that steals from them first.

He means to make for the shadows in the far corner, between safe and shadowed table, but he freezes when the  _ warble _ hits him. Slowly, he turns his head - and right there,  _ right beside him, _ is a perch upon which sits a magpie. It cocks its head, offers a one-eyed scrutiny that makes Garrett’s blood run cold.

_ Shh. Quiet, birdie. Nice birdie. _ But he doesn’t say it aloud, and when he slowly eases away from the creature, it hops and shuffles its wings and fluffs up its feathers, but it doesn’t screech alarm. When, finally, he has reached the darkness he sought, it warbles quietly again and unfolds one wing to preen. Garrett’s heart is still racing, as he presses back against the wall, but he takes as many slow, even breaths as he can and tries to calm it. The thunder is still in his ears when probably-Basso comes back into the cellar and closes the door behind him, but at least he doesn’t feel shaky.

Garrett waits until he’s behind the desk, scowling down at some of the papers thereupon. Now or never. For reassurance, he glances sideways at the second window that he could not see from the outside - equally as narrow as the first, but above the shadowed table and much closer. And not behind the stranger’s back, not that Garrett usually has a problem being there.

“I hear you’re loo-” and that’s as far as he gets, because the man has already snatched up a glass half full of golden liquid -  _ liquor _ \- and hurled it straight for him. Reflexes long trained kick in, and Garrett ducks to the side, hears the glass shatter against the wall behind him, and then braces against the uneasy tingle as he steps slightly forward to the light. Just enough that he can be seen, not enough to make out any details. “Not quite what I had in mind,” he mumbles, not daring to take his eyes off what may now be a threat.

The man growls. “And just who the fuck are you?” He doesn’t ask how Garrett got in here; he probably knows.

“You’re Basso,” Garrett hazards instead. He’s met with a narrow glare and a nod. “Heard you needed a decent thief.” Just a few minutes ago, in fact, but Garrett keeps that little tidbit to himself.

Basso scowls. “And I guess ya think you’re that, hm?” Something dark in his voice, something ragged Garrett doesn’t recognise - but also doesn’t care to. It’s not his business, even if it makes alarm bells go off in his head, and he wonders if Master Amber was truly wise to entrust him to this fence.

“Nope.” Garrett feels the smirk form on his face, hidden by the scarf tied securely around it. “I’m an excellent thief.”

For a moment, Basso considers him. “Never seen you around, before. You new?” Garrett simply tilts his head, instead of reply; he’s not here to give away personal information. Nothing beyond the necessary. Basso grunts. “How’d you hear about me?”

“A mutual friend.” And he doesn’t even think her name, because calling her  _ friend _ is strange enough, even if he knows - after a decade of her guidance - that it’s probably true.

Eyes narrow, a deep glittering green in the candlelight, but then Basso sighs deeply and snatches up one of the many bits of paper from the desk. “You know what? Fuck it. Take this,” and he strides around the desk and hands off the paper, and Garrett balks a little and forces himself not to retreat at the abrupt approach. Once given, Basso backs off to his desk again, absently reaches up to pet the bird - hisses and snarls when it pecks him. “Consider it a trial run. Show me what you got, thief.”

Garrett doesn’t even read the job description. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he says instead, melts back into the shadows, and waits for Basso to roll his eyes and grumble and sit down. He reaches for the glass he no longer has, glares at the empty space, and the leans down to yank open a drawer. While his eyes are diverted, Garrett sneaks out the second window, is relieved that there is no dog waiting for him despite the doused lights, and heads back to the Clocktower to find out what it is he’s stealing, and from whom, and to plan how.

Master Amber is gone now, and he’s no longer an apprentice. It feels too similar to being naked, taking on a job on his own, even though he’s tackled jobs solo many times before - but always at his Master’s behest. It’s strange, knowing that he likely would have ended up doing this job all the same, had Master Amber returned, except it would be she who had spoken with Basso the fence and passed it to him.

He’s alone now, and speaking to the fence himself. When he succeeds in this ‘trial’, Garrett supposes Basso will be  _ his _ fence instead. Following in his Master’s steps, as any apprentice will.

Garrett isn’t sure, exactly, what the heat in his chest might mean.

* * *

He never intends to introduce Erin to his fence. One day, just as Master Amber did for him, he means for her to win herself a fence on her own merits - and despite their fighting and his growing doubts, she has many.

But she forces the issue, as she forces so many others, and when the argument devolves into a short chase and then a fistfight, Garrett hates himself for the habit. And all the same, he rolls with the momentum of her tackle, bucks her off in the same movement he flips back over, and eases away slightly, too low to the floor but at least balanced out. She lunges almost before he can take another breath, not giving herself the time to get her own balance.

And Garrett  _ hates _ it, but she doesn’t need it. He darts back, trying to dodge, and she clips his elbow - curls her fingers and gets a grip, and when she uses that as leverage to spin in her headlong dash, Garrett has to turn with her or risk popping his shoulder. He raises a hand as they do, hesitates to strike her elbow in turn where it’s locked straight. If he breaks her arm, then at best she’ll be out of commission for half a season - and at worst, forever.

It’s the reluctance that gets him. In the moment he chooses not to strike, Erin sweeps his legs out from under him and they go to ground again. This time, they don’t tumble - Erin yanks back on his elbow and sits on him. He’s got one arm free, stomach-down on the floor, but Erin digs one knee into the small of his back and the other into the back of his thigh, an inch below his butt. The rest of her weight presses down on his other thigh, keeping him from kicking - she pulls up on the arm she has control off, careful not to dislocate anything but enough that he can’t help the low snarl of pain.

She’s panting, but she stays where she is and doesn’t let up. After a moment, considering his options - he’s got a free hand, but so does she - Garrett lets out a sharp huff. Dust billows up from the floorboards; Erin’s not swept in here probably even once, and Garrett hates when they fight here. It gets in his nose and tastes of stale rot, and it’ll cling to his cloak and his leathers when he eventually gets up. He thanks whatever gods are listening that he’s not wearing his quiver or bow; it always hurts more when Erin digs the bow into his back.

It stings, and Garrett’s teeth grind as he does, but he taps the floor with his free hand, twice in rapid succession. He knows only too well that Erin will not let him up until he yields - he does the same to her - and in this position he knows struggling will only cause him more pain and bruises. Erin’s wearing the grin that he hates when she does spring up; digging her knees in  _ hard _ as she does.

Garrett muffles a low groan and slowly gets to his feet, unable to help the simmering glare. She lets him stretch out the kinks she put in him, roll his shoulder and flex the leg she pinned, watches as he slaps off what dust he can. When he finally looks over at her, she’s leaning loosely against the wall with her arms folded, victory shining bright in her eyes.

“So, what’s your fence’s name?” she chirps, as if nothing has happened. For a moment, all he can do is glare at her, and hate the situation.

He’s supposed to be her teacher, and she his student, and it times like this that he misses all the more the quiet professionalism he had with Master Amber. One day, he’s sure, Erin’s flaws and disrespect are going to outweigh the enormous talents that led him to apprentice her in the first place - and he wonders, all too often, just how close that day really is.

She waits, expectant. After all, they scuffled and he lost - she is owed her prize.

“Basso,” Garrett tells her, and walks away to fetch his bow where he set it aside on an errant table, and doesn’t see the way Erin  _ freezes. _ Next to it, his quiver, and he clips them both back into place; absently runs his fingers across the smooth worn wood of the bow limbs. He thinks, soon, that he might gift the bow to Erin despite her lacklustre archery skills - after all, he is very close to completing the mechanical replacement he’s been designing and forging for years now.

And it eats at him, the knowledge that Master Amber and Erin both have contributed to its perfection.

Now is not the time. He turns on his heel, stalks past Erin towards the night glittering outside. “And if you want to meet him, you have a minute to set your traps before I leave.” Even as he says it, part of him wishing to simply ditch Erin across the Highway and forget this unspoken deal between them, he knows that he will not. After all - she won.

“You underestimate me, Master Garrett,” she teases even as she takes off to do as she’s told. Obedience and defiance within the same breath. Garrett hates that he can’t tell if it’s a malicious mockery of the title, or if she’s trying to be sweet after kicking his ass. He hates that it only takes forty seconds for her to join him back outside on the ledge - but at the same time, he knows that he taught her speed and timing and he’s  _ so proud _ of the skill with which she wields them.

It’s the last time she calls him Master.

 

*

 

Basso isn’t surprised, when Garrett slips in the window and murmurs his name, though he is - as always - startled. Jenivere caws at them, eyes Erin as she slides in behind Garrett. Green eyes flick between them, as Garrett pulls down his scarf (it’s out of respect, no matter the odd glance Erin gives him), and takes half a step into the light.

“Evening, Basso,” Garrett greets him anyway, and he’s met with a vague grunt and a wave. Basso glances towards Erin’s shadow again, and then looks down at his desk.

“You finish that Penflower job then?”

Garrett offers a half-shrug. “That was tonight’s plan.” Until Erin fought her way into the new arrangement. They’ll still go, after this - but the detour might cost them. After all, he’d meant only to collect Erin for the job, not stay at the mill and fight. It’s a good thing he can feel the arguments coming a mile away, after three years. “Basso, meet my apprentice.” He gestures with one hand, ever so slightly.

With a hesitant step, Erin comes into the light even as she tugs her hood back, and Garrett isn’t expecting her wide eyes or the faintest touch of pink in her cheeks. Narrow gaze, he glances between them, confused - and Basso looks up to greet her and goes still, his own eyes widening too.

Then, he comes around the desk and approaches her, and she doesn’t balk. “Primrose?” he asks, incredulous. Again, Garrett shoots a glance between them - he’s never heard Erin mention the name.

“It’s Erin, now,” she corrects him, voice low.

_ They know each other. _

It’s like getting kicked in the balls, the way it hits him. A moment later, he’s filled with resignation like molten steel; of course they know each other. The City is nothing if not a writhing sewer full of snakes. It’s only inevitable that they bite one another’s tails.

Basso offers them both a wide grin. “Shit, Erin. Good for you.”

And Erin laughs. “Not so good for Penflower,” she returns, and the twisted grin Garrett hates is back again. “Never thought you’d go legit, Basso.”

“Hey,” he snaps back, but smiling as he does.  _ “Barely _ legit, don’t go insulting an old man. Go on, get. Don’t you two got a job to do?”

And they both nod together, Erin snickering and Garrett utterly silent, but when Erin sneaks out the window first, Basso clears his throat quietly to get Garrett’s attention, and turns on him a different kind of smile.

“Hey, Garrett. You did good, picking her up. This is a better life for her.”

For a moment, nothing - Garrett has no response to that, and Basso doesn’t seem to expect one. He’s waved off, and Garrett follows his apprentice out into the night - and he wonders, in silence, if Basso is right, or if in the end the whole thing will bring only disaster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UGH. BASSO. THE MAN IS A SAINT.  
> Fix all these broken thieves, Basso. I believe in you.


	3. If You Could Care - Well, If Only

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They remember, with painful clarity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All Aboard, my excellent bitches.  
> 

Garrett remembers, with a clarity so acute it hurts, the moment he realised that Erin didn’t care.

She has never shown much interest in his moral code, what there is of it, and five seasons into her training she acts as if she has advanced beyond it. He tries, still, whenever he finds opportunity - honour amongst thieves, certain acts that are off limits. They are criminals, yes, but they are not monsters. _No stealing from children or street rats:_ this Erin agrees with, when he tells her, and he has never had to tell her again. _Don’t get involved in fights that aren’t their own:_ she sneers when he orders her not to intervene as they flit across the rooftops and hear the muffled sobbing and low grunts, and in the next moment she is gone, already disobeying. Garrett lets her go, waits for her at the entrance to her mill. He isn’t certain, but he admits to a creeping suspicion as to what Erin will find at the end of those noises; when she arrives on his heels thirty minutes later, he doesn’t ask what she’s done about it.

He doesn’t want to know.

 _Your life is more important than the job:_ she **laughs** when he tells her that, pats him on the shoulder and ignores the way he avoids the touch. “Not a problem,” she says, flashing a wicked half-grin that Garrett has come to very much dislike. _We don’t kill unless we have no choice:_ she never responds to this one.

There’s a flicker in her face, some darkness in her eyes that Garrett can’t fathom, but it makes his skin crawl. He worries about it, that dawn, while he puts himself to bed. Does she understand why he has that rule? Death isn’t something that can be quietly taken and appraised, it isn’t something Garrett can put back if he decides he doesn’t like its shine. To kill someone in cold blood is not only a twisted, revolting act of theft that Garrett can’t stomach, it’s one that he knows - only too well - steals from the dead and the living in equal measure.

Those few lives that he has taken himself, only three, weigh deep in his gut if he dwells too long; hard, pitted places that feel cold with regret, and Garrett often wonders if they are the bits of himself that his victims took with them.

And more than that: there is _pride_ in ghosting through The City. Garrett has tried so hard to teach Erin that stealing is more than its end result. The material possessions are nice, of course - the security of it, if for some reason Garrett had need to go legitimate - the way they sparkle and catch in the light - but there’s a deeply visceral satisfaction to it that Garrett worries Erin doesn’t feel. There is _pride,_ electric and effervescent, tingling adrenaline and clean-cold breaths and the steady drum of his heart, and to be forced to kill is nothing short of absolute failure.

But she just looks away when he tells her, scowls the scowl that he knows means she is about to refute him, and then says nothing. Offers a half-shrug and slips out from under the rule like a dog slipping its collar.

Garrett worries, for seasons, fears that she hasn’t understood, that she will kill unnecessarily and learn in the most painful way possible why he wants, so strictly, for her to refrain. It haunts his steps, when he starts to take her on easy jobs, when he starts to let her have a lead and show him what she’s learned. He cannot escape the memories of the first life he took - and even now, while he reminds himself that he did not have a choice and fights not to feel the sword against his ribcage, he wishes he had found another way and tries desperately not to recall exactly the smell of death and the way life looks when it flees the face.

If not for Master Amber, he understands, it very well might have been the end of him. Overwhelmed with it, overcome by the madness that came with murder - or worse.

So he worries, that when the time comes for Erin to defend herself, she will kill when she doesn’t have to and he may lose her to it. He doesn’t think about why the idea frightens him so much; he is her Master. He has an obligation to protect her, and this is only one of the many, many ways in which it is possible for him to fail. If ever he had friends - and it is a patently ridiculous thought - then Erin and Master Amber would be the closest he got. It is a professional relationship, certainly, but there’s a layer to a master-apprentice bond that Garrett has yet never observed in anything else.

He hasn’t, admittedly, done an excessive amount of observing, but the belief remains.

And, five seasons and four weeks into Erin’s training, he comes to the stark, bitter realisation that it doesn’t matter.

It’s early autumn when it happens. A simple job - not _too_ simple, because Erin has improved so quickly and Garrett is so proud of her, Master to apprentice, in a slightly detached way - in the upper ends of Dayport. Not a complicated retrieval: get in, steal, get out. Basso has arranged the dead drop, and Garrett has already scouted the house.

Poor security, compared to Auldale, but impressive for The City at large. There is one guard stationed at the front door, sitting on the steps and half-asleep. Within the house are two more; one remains with the tenant of the house almost at all times, and Garrett considers him a non-issue. The second paces the top floor of the building, watchful eyes on bookshelves dripping with ornate tomes and glass-encased collections, ensuring that the two safes hidden behind a false wall and a swinging portrait remain untouched. Last, by far Garrett’s least favourite security measure, there is a dog that free roams the halls. It is a large creature, although straw-coloured fur hangs off it in soft sheets and its ears droop slightly. Not half as threatening as the Watch’s wolfhounds - and yet, when it caught his scent while he scouted the place the previous night, deciding if he would bring Erin here, it still growled and sought him with thick, sharp fangs.

Garrett’s fingertips tingle at the memory, and he flexes his hands a little ruefully. At least one of the these security measures is his fault - as are the little shiny baubles Basso was delighted to buy off him - but he is a man of simple desires. How was he to say no?

“Your lead, Erin,” he tells her softly as they observe from one building over. “Client wants a set of statues in the safe. Everything else is fair game.”

She smiles at him, an utterly delighted grin that he has seen only a few times before, and gestures for him to stay put. Before Garrett can question her, she breaks away and leaps across the gap to the building they’re robbing - moves heavily, weight in her feet, and spends no less than four laps around the roof practically _stomping._ He’s seething when she leaps back towards him, in graceful silence, but as stupid and needlessly riotous - _reckless_ \- as Erin’s being, it works. He almost wishes it hadn’t. The guard at the front door has sleepily roused, watched the sky for a few moments while Erin blundered the roof, and has now disappeared inside in an addled panic. Garrett has absolutely no doubt he’s running all the way upstairs to check the roof manually; and it is quite possible that inside attention has been directed there too.

Without waiting for him, she slips over the edge and slides down the side of the building they’d perched on. He follows, silent, and lets her take point through the front door. It isn’t even locked. “This is too easy,” she hisses to him as they wind their way up the single flight of stairs, and he gestures her down. Easy or not, speaking is an amateur way to get caught, and she doesn’t know about the dog yet.

The disaster comes, as it usually does, when she finds out. They knock out first the guard stationed in the safe room; he has kept some wit about him and remained, but he is motionless in his patrol and staring upwards at the ceiling. Waiting, Garrett guesses, for his companion to declare the roof safe. Erin palms her blackjack and delivers swift darkness - Garrett catches the body as he falls, and together _(Why do all these guards have to be bulkier than me by half?)_ they drag him to the corner. He’s not well shrouded, but the window curtain at least makes him less obvious.

For the last time that night, Garrett feels a coil of pleased satisfaction when Erin doesn’t simply assume the room safe and instead leads him on a brief tour of the whole second floor. They find, on a narrow landing leading to rooftop access, the tenant of the house and her bodyguard. Erin counts them down silently, a rapid two-second beat to minimise the risk of either turning around, and with synchronised strikes they too go to sleep.

Erin’s starting to rush now, as they drag the two bodies against the wall (the woman is comfortably heavy and her bodyguard is the biggest of the lot, they cannot safely or quickly drag them anywhere else), no doubt doing the mental math. There is only so hard they can safely hit someone in the head, if they want to avoid risking the kind of damage that would only lead to their death anyway, and it limits how long they will remain unconscious. Garrett’s safety margin is ten minutes, usually - any significant amount of time longer, and he’s hit hard enough to kill - but he’s had people wake up after as little as two. They’ve spent nearly three checking the rest of the floor and taking out the tenant and her bodyguard.

They’re listening, the both of them, ears straining for the sounds of the first guard waking up, or the last coming down, and Garrett hears the light, rapid steps as they come up the stairs. He waits, five seconds - ten - Erin hasn’t heard it. She isn’t listening for a dog, he supposes, doesn’t know to expect one. It is… understandable, in a way, that she’s so focused on what she doesn’t want to hear that she hasn’t noticed what she _does_ \- but it’s a dangerous habit to have.

They have killed the lights while he waited - one lamp and a set of candles - and Garrett taps her shoulder with one finger and nods slightly. Erin turns, and her eyes go wide as she registers the presence of the dog. The animal seems taken aback by the dark, shakes itself, and then its tail lowers into a low swoop.

A faint rumble shakes in the air.

 _“Shit,”_ Erin hisses to herself, so far below a whisper even Garrett barely hears it - but the dog has better hearing than he does, and the rumble erupts into a full blown snarl. They dart away, moving back into the safe room, but the sudden scramble of claws and savage barking follow them.

A shout from above, and they hear the stumbling lumber of the last guard tearing his way back inside.

Garrett whips off the delicate recurve bow Master Amber gave him and yanks a blunt arrow from his quiver. Aims and fires in a second, and the dog stumbles into the floor with a yelp as it’s hit smack in the muzzle. Pained, and disoriented for a moment - but it’s already figuring its way back to its paws, whining and snarling in equal measure. “Well, now we’re gonna die,” he tells Erin - silence is long past them now. In the corner, the guard they half-hid is stirring, likely feeling dizzy and sick, roused by the racket.

Another blunt arrow, and this time the dog whimpers but doesn’t fall as it’s struck; arches its back, hackles raised, and growls at Garrett. “Shut up, Master, I have a plan,” Erin snaps back, voice unsteady, even as the last guard comes barreling into the room brandishing his sword. She’s palming something, running over to the waking guard as Garrett retreats from the dog, reaching back for an arrow laced with choking powder. If he’s lucky, it’ll put the dog down for a few minutes - if he’s not, it’ll just piss the creature off.

He’s not lucky.

The whole room is chaos, and the next moments pass too slowly, even as Garrett feels as if he’s been struck in the chest by their whiplash. The front-door-rooftop guard is yelling, jumping towards them with his sword ready to slash - and the dog is shaking its head free of powder, the manic shine in its eyes made even worse by the particulates. There’s a shout, a furious barked growl, and then--

“Flash!” Erin calls, and Garrett has the split second impression of her _kicking_ something, even as she breaks the seal and hurls the flashbang down. The glass end, newly exposed, smashes cleanly and the volatile contents explode in a flash of blinding white light. The sound is only barely muted by Garrett clapping his hands over his ears, and he scrunches his eyes shut and ducks his head but he can still see whiteness through his lids. His bow dangles uselessly from the crook of his elbow, dropped from his hand at Erin’s warning so he doesn’t smack himself in the head with the wood.

There’s growled barking, in the ringing din aftermath, and Garrett feels a small hand close over his wrist and tug, and even as he uncoils and follows Erin the room fills with a shrill scream, confused panicked yelling, and a wet, snarling _tearing_ that kicks Garrett in the gut.

Then they’re on the roof and fleeing, and Garrett lets Erin take the lead here too, lets her run them across the Highway until he’s sure she’s just running at random. Calls a halt - they’re deep through Stonemarket now, almost to the docks. Erin skids to a stop - noisy, unwieldy - and doubles over once she has, gasps for breath. There’s a mark on the outside of her left ankle, barely visible against the leather of her boots, but now that they’ve stopped, Garrett can make it out. She was too close to the flashbang when it went off; for all the noise and light they give off, the actual explosion itself is very small. She must have thrown it directly at her feet, to be scorched like this. Garrett makes a mental note to tell her not to do it ever again.

He would tell her now, except he’s also standing loose, leaning forward slightly, trying to catch his breath.

Of course, he recovers before her, and fixes her in a glare. “You call that a plan?” he asks, indignantly, putting his bow back into place and trying not to feel the thundering adrenaline still rushing through him, making him vibrate unsteadily. “You could have gotten us killed. You scorched yourself.” Gesturing, and _oh_ there it is. “What about that guard? You set the _dog_ on them.”

Erin stares balefully back, still panting but forcing herself to straighten up. “And what?” she manages back, her voice cold. “We got out, right? I’m not hurt and neither are you. Our lives are more important than the job.”

It’s like getting slapped in the face. There is a sharp twitch in Garrett’s hand, throttling the sudden urge to slap her back. “It was stupid and reckless, and that dog might well have _killed_ that guard.” It’s snarled, low, and Garrett wonders when exactly he got so close - takes a deep breath, digs his nails into the leather palms of his gloves, moves back. Gets control.

“So the fuck what?” Snapped back without even a pause, as Erin shakes herself out and runs a hand through her short hair, knocking her hood back. Garrett goes deadly still. “We needed to get out. I didn’t kill anyone, _you_ didn’t kill anyone - we didn’t even kill the damn dog. If it’s so badly trained it mauls its own masters, that’s not my problem.”

A full minute goes by in absolute silence. She’s got, some tiny part of Garrett argues, a point. He doesn’t even know for certain the state of the guards, and he has no plans to go back and check. He rather suspects he’ll find out tomorrow night, when he completes the job _alone_ \- and he’s dreading it already. Even if the guard lives, Garrett can’t unhear the slick ripping noise of teeth sundering flesh from body; it beats low in his belly, a rumbling nausea he can’t shake.

Eventually, Erin shifts on her feet, eyeing Garrett closely - he wonders, dimly, if she’s nervous or just upset that he’s gone silent. He knows from past experience that she doesn’t like it when he stops talking, although he isn’t sure why; he’s accepted it as just one of her things.

And he tries to come up with something to say, he really does, but his thoughts won’t align right. There’s too many of them, spinning violently, a dozen responses thudding in his chest until they blur together into something grey and static-y that he can’t even begin to decipher. Maybe she’s got a point, and maybe she didn’t put hands to the guard and maim _(kill)_ him herself, but if he dies… she’s still responsible.

Doesn’t she see that? Doesn’t she understand that there’s blood on her hands now? Death won’t wash off, no matter what she does. Garrett’s learnt this the hard way, and as desperately as he suddenly realises he’d hoped to keep her from it, now she will too.

Erin shifts her weight back again, as her breathing finally starts to even out. “Master Garrett?” she asks, quiet. He takes a quick breath, mouth open, trying to respond - tries to formulate the right words, to ask if she understands - to scold her for being so hare-brained and so injudicious - to warn her, because she might not have murdered a man but she’s _responsible--_

But he can’t make his voice work, can’t get the cotton fuzz to go away long enough to string together something coherent that’s more than _You’ve done this-- Don’t you understand-- You’re responsible--_ And he sees the way her shoulders tighten at his silence.

“Why are you so hung up about it?” she demands, an angry outburst, throwing her hands in the air, even as something else glitters in her eyes, and Garrett isn’t at all certain what it might be. “I messed up, okay? I didn’t hear the dog. And then I got us out of it, and _we’re_ okay and who gives a shit about them? They’d soon as see us hang. Better them than _us.”_

And Garrett understands, as she speaks - finally, he understands. It’s cold, under his cloak, the realisation that washes through him, chased by a prickling shiver and the ache of leather rubbing on raised skin. His breath feels too hot against his face, reflected by his scarf.

_She doesn’t care._

Erin understands. It was a waste of energy, a waste of concern, to worry if she knew what she was doing. She understands that there’s blood on her hands - and she just doesn’t care. Perhaps it’s just that it isn’t Garrett’s blood, or her own, but it doesn’t matter why. There is nothing to fear, regarding Erin being forced to kill, no reason to worry about when it might happen and how Garrett will help her through it.

He won’t need to. _She doesn’t care._

“Go home,” he chokes out, barely even hearing how jagged his voice is. It hurts, forcing out the words, trying to make his lips and tongue mould around his teeth the right way. He’s pretty sure it comes out a little slurred. “Job’s over.”

There’s a moment of hesitation, something dark and sharp flashing across her face, and she lifts a hand slightly before dropping it again. “... Yes, Master Garrett,” she mutters instead, and she turns and takes off. Those moments have been getting more frequent, of late, moments between orders and obedience. She knows only too well that she’s supposed to do as she’s told - it was, after all, pretty much the only hard rule he offered in regard to accepting her request for apprenticeship - and yet… she hesitates too often, and Garrett realises that soon, he may have to face her defiance.

It barely matters to him, right now, as he vaguely watches her disappear towards the docks proper and then turns around to head back to the Clocktower. He needn’t worry about losing Erin to guilt when she's forced to kill. She won’t feel it.

Freezing in the knowledge, Garrett wonders instead what he is going to do when she _chooses_  to kill.

* * *

Erin remembers, with a clarity so acute it hurts, the moment she realised that Garrett didn’t care.

Some part of her still believes it’s her own stupid fault for letting herself get so attached. She knows better - of course she does - but he saved her. It always rankles to admit, that truth, and Erin wants to tell herself as loudly as she can that she would have been _fine_ without him - but the stark reality is that The City would have eaten her alive if not for Garrett. Nascent talent and stubbornness that sometimes borders on suicidal aren’t enough to survive on the streets of The City.

It is something that Erin understands only now, watching the fate that might have been hers as it consumes so many others. Young and old, able and infirm, resigned or angry. The City doesn’t care who you are - if you fall down, it will bury you and never once look back.

And if only she was in better control of her emotions _(Hah,_ she thinks, because Garrett would love that irony), then maybe it wouldn’t hurt so damn much.

But it is nearly the start of her third year of apprenticeship and she knows only too well that trying to pickpocket Garrett is the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to her, and she cannot help how much it _hurts._

How can’t he see? It is such a little thing. She knows that he is her Master, and she reminds herself constantly to do as he says even when she doesn’t understand why he’s so uptight about it, even when she burningly, _desperately_ wants to do something else. She knows that when they are training, she is the apprentice and even when she beats him in sparring it doesn’t change the nature of that relationship.

 _I’m so stupid,_ she tells herself, for not realising that it is their _only_ relationship.

Maybe it’s her own fault, for reading too much into it - for all the things he does. They frustrate her, so many of them. He rewrites their job briefs, so that she can never recognise his fence’s handwriting - he makes her read books that definitely aren’t about stealing, or even remotely related to being a thief - he gives her lessons that she’s never going to use, chemistry and physics and engineering. When she tears one of the gloves he gave her, two seasons in, he shows up with a bundle of leatherworking tools and some raw leather and tells her to replace it. (She gives up on that, after six weeks, and pays a real leatherworker to do it for her).

And when she gets sick, one particularly bitter winter, he diligently stays at the mill with her and makes sure she recovers.

Was that just it? Was it nothing more than diligence?

They’re all so _frustrating,_ all the things he does that make no sense, that make her feel belittled. Why won’t he introduce her to his fence? He never offers a reason, when she asks, just says _No_ and leaves it at that. And she tries to leave that, because he is her Master-- except that’s not why she struggles to accept it and she knows it. He’s as odd as any street rat, even for having become a legendary thief, but Erin has never begrudged him his oddities; she knows too well that she has many her own, and besides… brothers are supposed to be strange.

She wonders if it was ever true. After all, when she’s spent almost every night with him for nearly nine seasons, over two years, surely she isn’t the freak between them for thinking of him as family. He acts like her brother, protective and as patient as he can manage, even when they clash and spit and fight.

Is she just an idiot? Perhaps it is just his responsibility as her Master. He is obligated to protect her - she technically belongs to him - and maybe… maybe it’s nothing more.

It’s such a little thing, but he starts when she asks and then looks at her like she’s crazy. “No,” he says, and it’s so fast - reflexive and cutting, and Erin shrinks back on herself despite the blaze of indignant anger that sparks to life in her chest and threatens to sting in her eyes.

“What?” she snaps back, too astonished to check her tone. “Why not?” It crumples in her chest, as if a burrick had kicked her.

He continues giving her that look, like she’s lost her mind for even asking. “We’ve got work to do, Erin. Have you done _any_ archery practice this week?”

As if _she’s_ the one in the wrong here. Straight back to business, work _work,_ like there’s nothing else to life. And no, of course she hasn’t done any archery - she never does it until Friday, until she _has_ to in order to fulfill his ridiculous demand she do at least twelve hours a week. Fridays, when she busts out eight of them in a row, and then does the last four on Saturdays, during daylight hours. She hates archery - she’s never picked up the knack for it, doesn’t know how Garrett handles the bow like it’s an extension of his own body, so fast and fluid - and she knows she’s never going to be good enough at it for Garrett, but still, she does the hours. She much prefers working with her daggers. _Those,_ she knows she handles in sleek movements, balanced to her palms like additional, stabby fingers.

She _does_ the hours, but he’s still snippy about it, because she’s not getting better (she hit a wall two seasons ago and hasn’t moved since), because she doesn’t do it _exactly_ how he wants her to, and it’s not fair - it’s not _fair_ \- and it’s… It’s such a little thing.

“Fuck the archery,” she snaps instead, and tries not to feel the stinging hurt curling away in her chest like a taut wire cut loose. His eyes darken. “It’s one night, Master Garrett.” She hates that it sounds pleading as well as angry. “I just want to have dinner on the docks. No one will see us at the top of the lighthouse.” It barely counts as a lighthouse, and it certainly doesn’t have an actual light, but she’s never figured out what else it could have been built for. Maybe it was just stonework pride.

His expression narrows in confusion, like he doesn’t understand why she’s asking again. There’s an edge there, almost nervousness, and she’s not sure why. It’s such a little thing - she’s not asking for anything special. One night off from training, one night to just relax together and eat something and watch the water. He frustrates her so much, but she admires him in equal measure and she assumes-- she has assumed, until now, that all the things that frustrate her, that don’t seem to have anything to do with her thief training, are just the quirks of an older brother. Just… things he does, to help her or protect her somehow, things she doesn’t understand the reason for but believes he has one, in his own weird brain.

“Why?” he asks in consternation. Still looking at her like she’s the crazy one.

And she’s such an idiot, for daring to think that his distance and secrets were just quirks. She’s _so stupid,_ for thinking that he viewed her like a sister. _'Why.'_ There’s no reason for him to say no, no reason to react like this to a simple request - _such a tiny thing_ \- just to eat together without it being about _work._

Except of course there’s a reason; and it’s that he isn’t interested in her beyond work. _He doesn’t care._

“It’s my birthday,” it slips out anyway, whiplash and weak at the same time, and Erin hates the tremor in her voice. It’s been so, so long since she got the chance to celebrate her birthday with someone. Since coming to The City, it’s never been safe - not until now. Her first with Garrett, it was still too new and too uncertain and she kept it to herself; after all, she’d escaped the House only a few days after she turned eighteen, and Garrett had apprenticed her less than a season later. Her first birthday with Garrett had been such a mess in her own head that the idea of sharing it had been too daunting to think about.

This was her second. He was-- She’d thought-- Garrett was her Master, but she’d thought he was more than that, she’d thought he _cared._ She’d assumed he’d want to share her birthday, like any brother would.

And it _hurts,_ like he’s cracking her ribs open with his bare hands, when something dark and jagged flashes across his face at that and he looks away. There’s a moment of silence, and Erin wonders - desperately, _hopes_ \- that he’s going to relent. Celebrate with her. She’s twenty years old, now: no longer a teenager. She _made_ it this far, and she deserves to celebrate it. She’s made it this far with Garrett, and he deserves to be part of the celebration.

Even if it’s just quietly eating dinner together at the top of an unused lighthouse, and not having to worry about anything else.

He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. There’s… something, in his face, but Erin can’t read it because he’s pulling his scarf up to cover his expression. There’s another something, liquid in his cocoa brown eyes when he looks back at her, finally - something fathomless and dark. “Don’t worry about the archery practice. I’ll… leave you to it.”

And she can’t read his tone, but a moment later he’s _gone._ She catches his shadow, slipping out through her hidden entrance, doesn’t hear his footsteps as he leaves because he’s silent as a ghost across the Highway and she’s already given up on ever replicating it, focuses on speed instead because what does it matter if she’s heard when she’s already two buildings away - and then it hits her that he’s _gone,_ and he didn’t wish her happy birthday, didn’t even stick around for a full minute after she told him.

_He doesn’t care._

Birthdays are personal days. It’s only natural that she should want to share it with her brother.

Garrett is her Master. It’s a personal day. Erin walks numbly back into the mill, mindlessly sets her traps and curls up in bed and tries _so hard_ not to look at the sketch of Garrett she’s got on the wall. It came out so well, the only sketch he’s ever let her take with his scarf down - she’d thought, at the time… She’d thought…

But he’s gone. _He doesn’t care._ Nothing more than her Master - it’s just business.

And she hates that it hurts so fucking much, that she’s so, _so_ stupid, she hates that it feels like her chest is rotting even as her throat threatens to tear, because it’s her own fault for ever hoping, it’s her own fault for ever thinking that it was anything _more._ Garrett isn’t her brother, her family. She’s not even yet known him for three whole years. He’s not… He doesn’t care. He’s just her Master.

It’s just business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so the dumping ground gets ever bigger. Outsider's _ass_ you guys, I'm meant to be writing What Lurks but here I am, making myself cry at fucking one am, because these two thieflings just _don't understand each other at all and oh gods Erin just wants to keep them safe without their lives being in mortal danger first and Garrett thinks he's being **considerate** by leaving her to sulk in peace because it doesn't even **fucking occur to him** that people celebrate----_
> 
> You guys. I am Not Okay, send help, y o u g u y s.  
> JUST. LOVE EACH OTHER. STUPID THIEF SIBLINGS.


	4. In Death We Believe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We do not kill unless we have no choice."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was reluctant to post this chapter, but - while there are other reasons I'm choosing to do so - you all have Haethel to ultimately thank for it going up right now, so show her some love.  
> (Also, preemptive forgive me for being so slow over the next month or so with What Lurks).

Garrett is thirteen the first time he stares death in the face.

Oh, he’s seen it plenty of times before, met the corpses and watched the inexorable march of it upon The City and those who dwell under its boot. He’s seen people die, but it has always been an abstract, distant observation. He has stayed as far away as he possibly can, run like all hells whenever it slunk too near.

He is thirteen, and it is the first time he watches the light go out in someone’s eyes.

It’s not the  _ first _ job he’s accompanied Master Amber on, but he’s still counting. This is the sixth time she’s taken him from the safehouse with the promises of actual shiny things at the other end, rather than practice or learning or nicking food only to put the excess back on the wrong stalls, just to fuck with the vendors. He’s gotten used to the feeling of leather on his skin, although it still feels strange as he moves low on Master Amber’s tail. Perhaps it’s the way the leather rubs, smooth and warm and tight all at once - or maybe it’s the movement itself, posture and tread not quite yet natural.

He hates that he struggles with it,  _ still, _ when Master Amber is silent like the dead as she creeps along before him, leads him through the sleeping house. When she motions for him to stay put, as they cross the threshold to the bedroom, he watches her flit right up to the enslumbered couple, slip rings directly from their fingers without waking them - they do not even stir when she rifles through their drawers and takes necklaces, earrings, and an expensive pocketwatch.

At least… he thinks it’s expensive. It looks like it, from here, gleaming faintly gold and red. Anticipation curdles in his chest, knowing that later, Master Amber will have him practice appraising everything they steal tonight. He’s getting better, and quickly, but he’s not perfect yet, he doesn’t get it right all the time. Tonight. He’ll be perfect tonight.

She comes back, winks at him as she goes past, and leads him into the main building. It’s not a large house, but it has enough rooms to make ransacking it worthwhile. There is one staircase, a creaky narrow thing, leading up to what Garrett thinks must be an attic. Master Amber comes close, and the faint mix of lavender and kohl is only discernible by her proximity.

It is, as it always is, such an impressive control of the senses that Garrett is reminded only again of how lucky he is to learn from her. A subtle scent, one that no guard would smell from even a few feet away without a strong wind, but enough to confuse the dogs. Few precious moments of confusion it may be, but thinking about the teeth snapping shut on the air behind them is enough to make Garrett appreciate those seconds.

Her voice trills out to him, held below a whisper this close - and yet still not quite touching. Once, she dared hug him. Save for sparring and direct training, she has maintained a barrier of space between them at least an inch wide at all times ever since. “I’ll take the attic,” she tells him in her lilting tone. “Scour the rest of the rooms. Don’t eat everything in the kitchen.” He can hear the smile behind the smooth fabric half-mask, moulded neatly to her face, and she winks again. Her eyelashes, dark and long with something that isn’t quite kohl and Garrett avoids touching, brush the top of her mask.

Nodding obediently, he looks away and surveys the rest of the floor. There are two more doors, from the little entrance hall, aside from the bedroom to the left. Garrett doesn’t know what’s behind each one, so he slinks up to the one on the right - keeps low, tweaks his cloak out around him and wishes that it didn’t scrape the floor. It sounds a cacophony to his ears, the fabric over wood that is rough by nature and smooth by force. He moulds his body to the shadows, tries to see how they move and how he must move with them. It isn’t always easy, doing things he thought natural the way Master Amber teaches them, but he is getting better all the time. He knows it - feels it in the way he’s changing as the seasons go by, the hard muscle in his thighs and belly where before was only bone. More, in every approving nod and  _ “Well done, Garrett,” _ from Master Amber, every dizzying burst of satisfaction when something goes  _ just right _ and everything works the way it’s supposed to.

He looks through the keyhole; he doesn’t expect the office that the room appears to be. Letters and inkwells are strewn about on the desk in the bedroom, as if it has become a place for writing. Whatever else offices are used for.

Writing. Right? What else was the point of an office except to keep writing.

Garrett thinks about ciphers - the four books on encoding and decoding that Master Amber has given him, that he’s already read cover to cover twice - and safes and what treasures they usually hold. Thinks about Master Amber’s fit of laughter when he asked about cracking safes, the way it lasted for  _ minutes, _ before she finally told him: “Most people are idiots, Garrett. Chances are, if they have to remember a code, they’ve written it down somewhere.” She’d been grinning like a lark as she’d said it, and Garrett didn’t have a clue what was so funny, but he’s never asked for clarification.

He slides the lockpicks from his gloves, realises he hasn’t even checked the door, and gives the handle a gentle nudge. It lowers easily, and he feels the lock click open - grabs it in a panic to arrest the movement, and then  _ so slowly _ eases it open just enough to slip through.

Closing it behind him is tempting, but there’s a person in here, he quickly sees. His whole body goes tense, and he freezes - unfreezes a second later, swallowing the fear, trying to do as he’s been taught and let the adrenaline flood him as if from a distance, taking in the room with the crystal sharp senses it lends him without succumbing to the light panting breaths he’s taking. Aside from the sleeping guard, there are papers everywhere - not just on the desk and strewn on the floor around it, but stacked haphazardly on the shelves in place of books, stuffed into a chest of drawers across the room, littering the frayed carpet like rampant footsteps. There are so many that Garrett just stares for a moment. How is he supposed to figure out which bits might be important? He can’t skim through them all - there’s too much, not enough time, and a guard who might rouse if he crackles a paper in just the wrong way.

He’s uncertain, surveying the room. Part of him wants to back out, to check the third room instead of risk wandering in this one. It’s dangerous, fucking around in here, and there’s a reason Master Amber had him stay back while she purged the bedroom of all its worth.

It uncoils under his skin, the thought that he’s turning scared for nothing more than a single sleeping guard and some paper on the floor. Master Amber’s in his head, practically caressing the tenants of the house, a wraith so skilled they don’t even twitch as she touches.  _ It’s just one guard. He’s asleep. _ Garrett can do this; he’s the apprentice of the best thief in The City. He can snoop around an office with one slumbering risk.

For the most part, it goes well. He spares as much time as he thinks he can rifling through documents - chooses the ones on the desk first. Those are surely the most important, right? Kept in the place where they’re actually supposed to be. There’s nothing of interest, at least nothing that leaps out at him - perhaps Master Amber would find something - and he moves away after several minutes to check the pile of notes beside the guard.

When he screws up, he knows with the certainty of dawn that it is his own stupid fault. He never saw the bird. The guard snuffles and moves, while Garrett flips over a thick parchment - he all but throws it to the ground, startled, leaping back from the movement. He remembers to watch his feet, manages not to stand on and crunch any of the paper on the ground - and across the room, half-hidden beside the chest of drawers, the raven lets out a ringing  _ caw. _

Garrett knows that it’s the wrong response, he knows that he needs to run  _ immediately, _ but he freezes up as the guard jerks awake, rouses in the span of two seconds, and fixes a furious, flustered glare on him. Heart in his throat, beating like the pawsteps of a chasing hound, but the sudden sheer panic rises up and strangles him free of thought. The sword is glinting in the dark, and there’s a shout in Garrett’s ears that he can barely hear over the rushing thunder of his own blood - why does his chest hurt so much? - there’s something wrong with his vision, everything spinning, and he can’t look away from the sword, even as it lifts towards him - and it’s his own fault, he’s failed, he’s ruined everything, let Master Amber down--

There’s a shrieking going on, grating screeches and the whistling flap of frantic feathers against steel. The blade turns slightly, swings towards him-- movement, silent and so fast he can’t even make it out, just barely registers its reality while the room turns grey and dim, and there’s an ache behind his ribs, so fierce he wonders if he’s already been struck-- there’s a frightened shout, a burst of blood--

Garrett finally takes a breath, shuddering and desperate, and Master Amber doesn’t let go of the blade in her hand, even as the guard stumbles and tugs on it, spluttering through the  _ crack _ and rupture of his nose where she’s struck him.  _ “Garrett, run,” _ she hisses, and it sounds distant in his ears, an echo that resounds inside his skull and is all but meaningless.

She’s bleeding, a steady drip-drip from her wrist, a stream that winds down her arm and drips also from her elbow, like an unwelcome, unexpected summer rain. It registers, dimly, that he needs to  _ go _ \- but his body feels like lead, too heavy and numbly prickling, like he’s merely an observer, like it’s not his own. Is he still breathing? Blinking? It seems to happen in slow motion, and Master Amber’s gasp of pain rings like the peal of a church bell as the guard rips his sword out from her grip. He feels it shiver under his skin.

So slowly, but all in a flash, the guard swings again, and Master Amber braces and catches it on her dagger - Garrett doesn’t remember her drawing it from its thigh holster, isn’t sure if she had it already or she’s just that fast, but the  _ clash _ of metal on metal screeches louder than the raven and he flinches - finally moves, takes an involuntary step back.

Master Amber’s whole body is yanked forward, rotated slightly; Garrett sees the guard’s fist in the middle of her chest, fingers hooked through her climbing harness - she pulls back, but the guard is stronger than her and shakes her with one rough jolt. Still squirming, it doesn’t stop her from trying, but the sword is being lifted again and Garrett can see the wet shine of red streaked across the blade - Master Amber’s blood, already spilt, already staining it.

_ He’s going to kill her, _ Garrett realises in stark clarity. It doesn’t even feel like his own thought - as if someone has whispered it to him and he knows, deeply enough that it’s like his insides are turning to liquid, that it’s true.

Why didn’t she duck when he swung at her? Why didn’t she move back, dodge, run away? She’s fast enough, he  _ knows _ this, she’s so fast that sometimes Garrett can’t even keep track of her, during sparring. A lone guard, still half asleep, shouldn’t have stood a chance against her. Her eyes flash to him, and he sees the glint of panic in them for the first time ever. Breathing rapid, her expression melts suddenly, as the sword threatens death. Why didn’t she…?

And Garrett almost stumbles when he realises. He doesn’t have time for this, he needs to help - dart in, hit the guard, something,  _ anything _ \- she’s been made and the only way to force the guard to let go of her harness would be to slash it to ribbons, and she doesn’t have the  _ time, _ and there’s screeching and shouting and Garrett can barely hear any of it over the thud of his own heartbeat and the furious howl of his own breathing in his ears.  _ It’s my fault. _ He’d been right behind her the whole time, frozen, staring - so, so vulnerable. If she’d ducked, moved away, the guard would have struck  _ him _ instead.

Master Amber’s dagger flashes out, and there’s an eruption of blood and Garrett recoils as the sword slips and clatters and the guard crumples to the floor - and Master Amber has to unhook his fingers from her harness, locked behind tight leather - and her dagger sticks out from the side of the guard’s neck.

She hasn’t even let go of it, rips it out with a wet squelching sound that brings with it a burning pit of nausea in Garrett’s stomach, and then she’s next to him, half crouched, and there’s blood dripping from both hands, sprayed up her left arm from dagger to shoulder. He can smell it on her, a musky copper that overwhelms his senses and fogs his thoughts. She doesn’t touch him.

“Damn,” she’s muttering, glancing back at the guard and then to Garrett again, even as her voice frays. “Damn it. Garrett, are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

Unwound, as unsteady as he’s ever heard her, and the teasing lilt is gone now, something cold and serious and urgent, but it’s still a question direct from his Master, and she isn’t playing any games. Unable to find his voice, he nods, then shakes his head, and stares - stares right at her, at the flecks of blood on her face and mask. Her jaw clenches - he can see the shift of her mask that betrays it - and the breath she takes is quaking.

“Come on. We need to go. Now.  _ Move, _ Garrett.” There’s some icy edge to her voice that spurs Garrett into action, a commanding desperation, and he turns after her and  _ runs. _ They go, as fast as they can, and Garrett knows he’s making so much noise as to wake the whole of Baron’s Way but it doesn’t matter, he doesn’t care - Master Amber only takes what pauses are necessary to ensure he’s keeping up, to make sure he’s with her, right behind her, as they scramble up onto the Thieves’ Highway and flee.

They don’t stop until they reach the Old Quarter. They’re not at the safehouse, not quite yet, but they’re deep in the district and hidden behind the rise of another rooftop, and Master Amber comes to a staggered halt in the moonlight. She leans over slightly, each breath a rasping jagged thing in her throat, and Garrett realises as he copies her and feels his knees go out from under him that she’s still holding her dagger, clenched painfully tight in her left hand. Her nails are white where he can see them.

She comes closer, drops to one knee, lets the dagger fall with a resounding clatter than Garrett flinches from. “Garrett,” she starts, and she’s breathless, rough. “Garrett, I need you to talk to me, okay? Are you alright?” It seems to take so much effort for her to speak - Garrett’s head swims, and nothing seems to be working right, his body liquid and shivering and everything just slightly out of place.

“You killed him,” is what comes out of his mouth, even though he’s trying to answer her, and it sounds like someone else’s voice. “You said… You said we don’t kill.”

Her expression twists, the mask torn free and hanging askew from her neck, and she looks away. “... I know. I know I said that. We don’t kill unless we have no choice, Garrett.” It catches in his chest, the phrase -  _ unless we have no choice. _ Did she? Did she have no choice? It burns in Garrett’s thoughts, all too much and not enough at the same time.

_ Sword, blood, fingers in harness and panic in her eyes and Garrett standing still and mute and useless, blades flashing, snarling. _

He would have killed her. If she hadn’t been there, he would have killed  _ Garrett. _

Something seizes in Garrett’s throat, a choked sound that isn’t a sob but isn’t quite anything else either, and he tries to take in a breath, feels it tear apart when he does. “I’m sorry,” Master Amber is saying, and he hears the same rip in her voice. “Garrett, look at me.” He does. Sees the blood on her, smells it in the breeze - remembers the panic in hazel eyes. “Did he hurt you?”

It’s so forced, the unhinged steadiness in her voice. Garrett can  _ see _ that she’s shaking, see the way that the guard’s blood is drying on her leathers and yet, her right hand is still bright red and wet. “No,” he answers, and for all that he feels like he may vibrate into pieces at any moment, it’s true. “No, he didn’t hurt me.”

Master Amber’s shoulders slump, and she all but collapses next to him, drops onto her ass and bows her head with a long, guttural sigh. “Thank the gods.” Soft, almost to herself. “... Do you understand why I killed him?”

“He wanted to kill us.” It’s automatic, obedience - speak when she speaks to him. Answer when she questions; get it right, understand why. It’s… familiar, and Garrett can’t quite grasp why it makes his chest hurt.

“Not just that,” she says quietly, and she’s not looking at him when he glances over, she’s staring at her dagger where it lies silently on the roof. Her right hand is cradled against her chest, fingers curled loosely and unmoving. “Plenty of people want to kill us. But he-- He had the opportunity and the means. If I hadn’t, it would have been us. Life is sacred, Garrett, but we preserve our own above all others. Your life is more important to me than his.” He can’t come up with a response to that - he knows,  _ he knows, _ that this happened because of him, that Master Amber is hurt because she chose to protect him. And he can’t meet her gaze, when she finally turns it on him, knowing that he’s failed, that this is  _ his fault. _

But her voice is calming now, her breaths coming easier. “Garrett, it’s okay.” Soothing. “This wasn’t your fault. I’m your Master, you remember that. I’m responsible for you, and what happens to you. I’m responsible.” It’s firmer, the same way it is when she tells him what the exact  _ wrong _ way to do something is, and that he’s not to ever do it. The same way she tells him the rules.

And it’s hard to believe, but Master Amber knows best, so Garrett swallows the protest and tries.

“You’re hurt,” he says instead, and flinches when she lets out a short, piercing laugh. It doesn’t sound anything like how she normally laughs. Her hand is still cradled in her lap, and the blood seeps out from behind split leather, and he can tell by the way her breath hitches when she stands up and jostles it that it  _ hurts. _

“I am, but I’ll be okay,” she reassures him. Gives him a quick up-nod. “We need to get you home. Come on, it’s not far. I know you can do it.” Holding eye contact, low and gentle and without doubt.

It’s so hard, but Garrett gets to his feet and tries not to breathe in the blood, tries not to think about the way the guard crumpled like his muscles had been cut. He tries not to think about the glassy stare of his eyes. Following, they move much slower across the rooftops as Master Amber leads him home, and by the time they get there Garrett can feel the adrenaline starting to wear off and he’s so sore and tired and shaky that he doesn’t even pause to take off his cloak when they finally slip through the window of his safehouse. He drops onto his bed, curls up over the blankets, closes his eyes - opens then again immediately, exhausted and the spray of blood playing over in his mind.

Master Amber stays, all through the day, and though the nightmares come he still feels safe when he starts awake and sees her figure, silently protecting him.

* * *

The second time Garrett sees Master Amber kill, he is fifteen, and they are in an impossible situation.

He isn’t sure, this time, if it’s his fault or not. They are running the rooftops, playing tag. His goal, he knows, is to stalk Master Amber without alerting her to his presence, and the only condition of his victory is to slip a tag onto her clothes somehow; a tiny little peg made of silver and hung with a little bell. When she hears it ring, she loses.

It’s a game they’ve played many times in the past year, one that Garrett finds incredibly frustrating and gloriously challenging all at once, and he has never won. It’s pleasing, when she races him across Stonemarket in early evening, still bustling with the nightlife of The City, when any glance up at the wrong time or a movement just a little too loud would give them away. Master Amber trusts him with that challenge, and he knows every time he matches her silence and is unseen as a ghost over all their heads that he is succeeding. He’s  _ good. _

So this time, when he slips, it’s at first no more than self-directed ire that the mistake brings. He bites down on the startled cry as the slate shifts under his foot and sends him spilling sideways off the roof - spins midair the way Master Amber’s taught him, shoulders-waist-legs as points of rotation, and grabs the grappling hook from its holster. Hurls it.

He’s lucky he was on such a high roof, he thinks, as the grapple snags and tightens and he’s jerked to a stop. Moments later, Master Amber’s head pops out over the edge of the building and looks down. “You okay?” she calls low, although there’s a ripple in her voice that makes Garrett think she’s just amused.

“Yeah,” he responds anyway, trying to get himself to stop swinging long enough to get good footing on the side of the building. There’s a tug on his rope, and he glances back to see Master Amber hauling him up.

He’s embarrassed, when they get him back over the side and onto the roof, vexed with himself. He should have known better, should have seen the loose slate or at least been quick enough to jump off it when it moved underfoot. There’s a faint ringing in his ears, adrenaline, the flash-fear of falling that he can’t quite erase no matter how many times he practices with the grappling hook, but he’s better now, he doesn’t let it rule him.

Master Amber laughs wickedly, when she throws the grapple back to him. “We’d best get moving. You freaked out a few too many civilians with that stunt.” But she’s grinning as she says it - and finally, Garrett hears the panic unfurling in the street below. Grimaces.  _ Stupid, _ not to be listening for it. He’s supposed to be aware of his surroundings at all times, and that includes hearing them. It’s not good enough - he has to do better. “Nice throw, though. Come on, this way.”

The chase is, at first, exhilarating. Slowly, over the last four years, the terror of the Watch has turned into something that ignites in Garrett’s stomach with a thrill that’s almost -  _ almost _ \- enough to negate the feeling of failure when he’s seen. He isn’t sure if it’s a natural progression, as he improves and grows and becomes something that the Watch just can’t catch, or if it’s an attitude he’s inherited from Master Amber. She laughs, as they dash across a gap and the  _ twang _ of a crossbow misses them both.

Shouting now, the thunder of boots on cobble as the Watch gives chase on the two thieves. It’s a waste of resources, when they curve around Stonemarket plaza and Master Amber slips a thin glass vial from its pouch and hurls it down. It strikes a Watchman right on the top of his head, the glass too delicate to do any damage, and the water within it splashes over his helmet and trickles down the sides of his face. Nothing but a taunt, and Master Amber lets out a howl of delight at the brief splutter that rises into the air behind them and fades to shouting - they’re already gone.

It’s infectious, despite himself, and Garrett’s grinning when they dodge around another two-man patrol. For a single moment, Master Amber drops a step so she’s side by side with him, “The docks,” in a short order, and takes off ahead of him again. They adjust their flight path, aim towards the docks past Stonemarket. Threats and blustered commands -  _ “Freeze! Stop running, thief!” _ \- billow out behind them, and they’re as effective at stopping them as an open safe.

But they are not perfect, not even Master Amber. It’s something she’s told him a thousand times.  _ “I’m not perfect. I will make mistakes. Our skill doesn’t come from never making a mistake, it comes from being able to account for them, and fix it when they do happen. We  _ **_will_ ** _ make mistakes.” _

And tonight, she makes a mistake.

It’s one Watchman, alone in having scrambled atop the roofs himself. Master Amber must have seen him, because she never misses anything - but she can’t have seen him, because she makes a turn and leaps across to another building and it does nothing to hinder the man’s sightline of her. For a split second, Garrett’s reminded of how she sounds in pain, watches the crossbow make the alignment with her body as she dances through the Highway, he sees her blood again.

_ She’s going to make mistakes too. _ And in a rush, the grin is gone and he chases after her at breakneck pace, making the jump. The adrenaline doesn’t feel so good, anymore, as he hears the faint  _ twang _ and dives - she’s turning her head, already twisting in response to the sound, but there’s no way she can dodge the bolt.

Garrett crashes into her and they both go down,  _ hard, _ split and roll and Garrett manages to catch his weight right, flips before skidding off the edge of the roof and comes to a stop. Unprepared for it, Master Amber does not. She twists as her momentum carries her closer to a fall, lets out a sharp noise as something catches wrong, and she’s heavily favouring her left leg when she does manage to stop, even closer to the edge than Garrett.

“Master!” he calls, gesturing, but she’s already looking - and two buildings away, the Watchman is reloading his crossbow and taking aim at her. The last bolt protrudes from the rooftop where they’d been only a second ago, quivering with its own power - that would have punched straight through Master Amber’s chest if Garrett hadn’t tackled her.

There’s a moment, a tiny fraction of awareness, in which Garrett sees her eyes flick towards the street and back up to the Watchman, and then he sees an icy glaze fill her face. Going down offers no escape - the street is flooded with the Watch, shouting and swords unsheathed, and he can hear the sharp  _ patter-crack _ of whatever they’ve got on hand to be thrown up at them, trying to bring them down, where they can be carved. But all the same, staying on this roof is asking to be shot.

Her bow comes off her back, miraculously unharmed by her tumble - although Garrett knows only too well how tough the bow really is, he’s seen her use it to stun a dog before - and in a second she’s drawn and nocked an arrow. It doesn’t quite seem real, when he sees the fletching - long, stiff feathers stained red with dye - and then she’s already loosed the glinting broadhead.

It hits home, straight into the Watchman’s stomach, and he drops the crossbow and stumbles. Drops to one knee. He’s not dead yet, but Garrett knows all too well that he  _ is _ dying; Master Amber has pierced his abdomen, perforated muscle and intestine and it’s hard to tell at this distance but maybe other organs besides. The man will be lucky to live, with the toxic contents of his gut pouring into the cavity of his body - but she has not killed him yet. Lucky, yes, but if his kin are quick, if they get to him and take him to a doctor in time, it’s possible that he might yet live - if he lets them, if he isn’t stupid and doesn’t--

He pulls the arrow out, and Garrett can hear the agonised sound from here.

_ There’s no saving him now. _

“Move,” comes the voice in his ear, and he turns on his heel and sprints after Master Amber as she takes off again. Towards the docks, carrying out the original plan to lose the Watch, but there’s no laughter or playful antics in her now, and by the time they cross districts Garrett is struggling just to keep up and keep breathing at once. She doesn’t stop until they reach the edge of the water, perched atop a cluster of apartments that reek with salt and perfume and sex. Master Amber doesn’t even seem to notice, and Garrett does his best to mimic that.

Her hood comes down, mask torn loose, and she sits on the edge of the roof, knees folded up with her feet under her, and rests her elbows on her thighs - buries her face in her hands and lets out a harsh breath. Her bow is set down beside her, carried in hand during the rest of the flight.

_ “Idiot,” _ she mutters, and Garrett is sure that it isn’t directed at him; doesn’t know if she means the Watchman, or herself. She’s hunched where she sits, back arched too far, her shoulders drawn in.

Quietly, Garrett sits down next to her and pulls down his scarf. “... Master Amber?”

She looks over, sharply, and then ruffles her hands through her own hair, a spiky halo of auburn-brown that is left even messier when she’s done. Lowers her hands to her lap. Stares at them. “... Thank you, Garrett. If you hadn’t seen him, I’d be dead. I’m proud of you.” It’s said flatly, a matter of fact acknowledgement, and Garrett chooses not to respond. It’s true - and it doesn’t make it sit any less uncomfortable in his chest, something not quite painful but altogether alien pressing on his diaphragm. The silence stretches, for a few minutes, and then Master Amber scrubs her face with her hands. “I’m going to make mistakes, and so are you. It’s a mark of our skill how well we can get out of those messes, but sometimes… Sometimes, our mistakes are going to cost lives.”

There’s something sharp in her gaze now, when she looks up at him again, and Garrett makes himself meet it steadily. He’s not afraid of her - gods know, he has nothing to fear from her - but it still makes him shiver, whatever jagged thing is in her eyes now.

“Do whatever you must, to make sure that it’s not  _ yours.” _

He can see it, as she looks back out across the sea towards the Moira Asylum; the weight that she’s carrying now, like a tangible thing. How it makes her shoulders slump low, how it hangs from her hands where they lay leaden in her lap. The way she hasn’t picked up her bow and put it back yet. Remembers, dimly, through the scrambled panic that are his memories of the first time he saw her kill, that it had caused the same.

But there’s no blood on her this time, no torn leather. A slight twinge, as she shifts and hisses softly, carefully stretching out her left leg, the adrenaline wearing off and letting her feel the bruise (or sprain, or whatever injury she sustained from being tackled), but no slashed skin, no open wounds weeping red.

So, following her gaze, he chances the question. “Is it… easier, Master? At a distance?”

For a few long minutes: silence.

“... No.”

* * *

He finds out, when he’s seventeen.

As always, when Master Amber sends him out to do a job solo, he’s pretty sure she’s ghosting him - watching how he handles it, checking ahead. Always ready to catch a mistake and keep the situation from going bad. It’s happened before, when she’s appeared out thin air to save him from a potential disaster.

Less and less, these days, and sometimes he catches sight of her first for the briefest moment, hears the familiar silent tread or the flutter of the ribbony half-cloak she wears from her hips, and knows that she’s there. She doesn’t interfere unless she has to, and Garrett is proud of himself that she hasn’t been needed for three seasons. He’s sure she still follows him, even when he cannot detect her and doesn’t know for certain - and tonight, while he scopes out the Auldale manor belonging to the Javinski house, he has no indication of her presence, can’t even feel it on the back of his neck like a sixth sense, but he’s sure she’s there.

She first took him into Auldale when he was fourteen, but it is only in the last year that he’s been permitted to wander it alone. It is that the job is here, more than anything, that has him convinced she is watching. It doesn’t bother him - rather, he feels a deep need to get everything  _ right, _ to be as good as he should be, as she believes him to be. He’ll make her proud, show her that he deserves the lenience of this task, that he is good enough to beat this challenge.

And, perhaps, it offers him some comfort. Mistakes happen, and Auldale is thick with personal guards. If he does screw up tonight, she’ll be right there to help him fix it.

It goes smoothly, at first. He breaks in through the top floor; a window left open to the warming spring breeze. Wary, as he slips through it, and he’s right to be so - a small boy sleeps within, curled under his blankets with back to the room. Garrett keeps his distance, creeping by on soundless feet, and quickly rifles through his stuff. He takes a clip adorned with pearls and emeralds, hidden at the back of a chest alongside a golden filigree bracelet and a necklace dripping garnets and moonstone -  _ “Been stealing from Mommy, have we?” _ \- and in the boy’s desk, he finds a set of silver inlaid cufflinks that he is far too young for. Takes them.

The boy doesn’t stir as Garrett slips out of the room, closes the door behind him, and then considers the hallway. The actual job is for the Javinski family crest, an heirloom ring marked with a stylised sun choked by creeping ivy. Garrett rather suspects he will find the ring on the Javinski patriarch’s hand, and it is as daunting a prospect as it is thrilling. Master Amber rarely lets him try to take trinkets straight from a target’s body; as skilled as she is, and as often as he’s seen her do it, she still refrains where possible - only if they are asleep, usually. He’s seen her risk it from waking people only four times, and she hasn’t been caught yet.

So he surveys the hallway, and starts checking rooms. Empty, empty, storage (and he takes the knife Master Amber has insisted he carry for six years and cuts out three paintings from that room, rolls them up tight and slides them into an open compartment in his quiver), empty. A bedroom, finally, the last one on the floor, but it is simple and plain; he finds one set of earrings worth stealing within and precious nothing else.

Perhaps it isn’t the boy’s  _ mother _ he had stolen from after all. It’s starting to seem more likely that the child isn’t of Javinski blood, but rather of their servants. Curious, that he be here, but then Garrett supposes live-in staff have lives too, families and desires of their own. Perhaps he was simply taking enough to run away on.

Garrett shrugs to himself and makes his way downstairs. It’s not his problem.

The next floor is where his problems begin. It’s plush, down here, the carpet thick and red-streaked white. He goes very still, for a moment, when he first sees that, and it takes a few moments to convince himself that it’s dye and not blood. It is, though - too bright a shade for blood, dry and smooth in the dim lights left on for the guards to patrol by.

And there are guards, a good number of them. Four, that he can count immediately, on hand just to roam these halls and the winding staircase he’s on. He waits, until the nearest guard’s back is turned, and vaults silently over the banister instead of risk slipping past him - lands lightly in the carpet and steps back into the shadow of the stairwell. When he sees the chance, he darts out, across the hall, and leaps up the wall to dig his fingers into the ledge there; a moment later and he slides into a vent. It isn’t exactly unusual, for Auldale manors to hold such internal ventilation, and he crows internally that he is small enough to fit through the (still unnecessarily) large vents.

Then he curses, tugging his scarf up a little more and pressing it against his nose, as the smell of bittersweet smoke fogs the vent.  _ Of course. _ He’d hoped, when he’d spotted it, that it might be something else - but more likely than not, they’re always to ease the haze of the building’s opium room. Not something the rich and noble brag about, not aloud anyway, but most all the manors have at least one. Garrett swallows a cough, presses his hand tighter over his face, and tries to breathe as little as possible. As long as he gets through quickly, he’ll be alright.

There’s one person in there, when he clicks open the other end of the vent - Garrett cannot believe his luck. The Javinski patriarch sits alone, stretched out on a lascivious couch, picked out in reds and golds. Not too much smoke, not yet, so he likely hasn’t been here very long (or he has frankly astonishing self-control for a poppy-drunk noble). Garrett waits for fifteen seconds, watching, before slipping out and dropping to the floor, letting his body fold to absorb his momentum and keeping quiet. He’s mumbling, the old man, under his breath about uselessness and betrayal and other things that Garrett couldn’t care less for.

Garrett weaves his way around ornate vases and the small glass table covered in trinkets - takes all the ones small enough to jam into pouches without stopping - and gets close. Javinksi is sprawled haphazardly, head lolling back and eyes closed, and he hums as much as he mutters, dim and intoxicated. Garrett’s holding his breath, because the dull roar of blood in his ears as his lungs panic and his heart rate rises is better than taking in a mouthful of poppy and screwing himself.

It takes long enough to ease the ring off the man’s hand that Garrett’s relented and taken one deep breath, with hand pressed fast to his scarf to ward off as much of the smoke as possible, because being a bit dizzy on it is better than passing out from lack of oxygen, or gasping in loud enough to alert Javinksi of his presence. He moans, softly, as Garrett takes the ring, swats and turns and picks his head up - takes a moment too long to open his eyes, and Garrett has ducked sideways out of his direct line of sight by the time he does, crouched low at the end of the couch. Javinski scours the room with blearly, fragmented senses and then all but collapses back down again.

Garrett’s heart is thundering in his ears and his chest aches, so he gives in and takes another breath. He needs to get out of here; he’s got the prize, and while he’s still lucid he can feel the warm curl starting under his ribcage, knows that he’s not going to be as sharp as he needs to be. It should panic him, but while he’s wary and focused on leaving, the effect is enough already to dull that response.

He means to leave the way he came, but as he swoops across the room and refuses to breathe in more smoke, his cloak catches on something - yanks too fast as he tries to stop and right it - comes free only as the vase tips - and the loud  _ crash _ of it shattering is enough to startle another breath from him, and a moment later the door is kicked open.  _ That figures, _ he thinks bitterly, even as he jerks back into the darkness of the room and tries to avoid the light spilling in from the hall. It wasn’t terribly unlikely, given the guard presence on the floor, but it’s just his luck that one of them was close enough to react almost instantly.

The darkness is not enough, or maybe he’s more addled than he thought and doesn't muffle himself sufficiently, but the guard makes him. Steel rasps from sheath, and Garrett lets the guard charge him. Darts around at the last second, flips off the Javinski patriarch where he’s staring with huge eyes from his couch, and sprints out the door. Crashes straight into a second guard and sends them both tumbling, catches his weight on one hand to flip over him and thanks the gods that he was quick enough in the motion that nothing slid free of its place; the quiver is designed to hold his arrowheads just tight enough to prevent it, should he end up upside down for any reason, but there are canvases therein and it isn’t foolproof.

While he has no intention of sneaking  _ out _ through the top floor bedroom - the sleeping boy will no doubt be awake now, alert to the ruckus - the front door is equally as  _ out. _ Guards were assembled outside, when he did a quick scout, and he knows he cannot slip by them all. Instead, he heads across the whole floor, making for a room on the far side that he knows opens with a window almost directly onto the estate wall. He’d considered it as an entry point, while he cased the manor, but walls like that are better for running away on, should the need arise.

_ Thank the gods I’m good. _ He’d been right to preserve the exit point.

The door he thinks he needs, following a mental map, is locked when he reaches it, but the house guards are right on his heels and he doesn’t have time to pick it. Instead he yanks out his knife again, presses the blade into the lock, and whacks the pommel of it as hard as he can. There’s a  _ crack _ as the lock breaks, and then he’s shouldering open the door and shoving it shut behind him.

He’s right about the room, but he doesn’t even get a second to glory in it because it turns out there’s a guard in here too, and Garrett meets his arm throat first before he can still his forward movement. Breathless for a moment, Garrett struggles as the guard picks him up bodily, and then all air is forced from his lungs as he’s slammed back first against the wall. Pain erupts in his shoulders and down his spine, and he hears the  _ crack _ \- doesn’t know if it’s his bow (smaller than Master Amber’s and carved along the limbs with little corvids, a gift he’s only been allowed to permanently carry for two seasons), or if it’s his ribs.

Moans, low, but the sound is almost nothing while he struggles, utterly winded, just to breathe. There’s a face in his,  _ too close, _ and Garrett smells the breath waft across his face - a mixture of coffee and salted meat, with just the faint hint of rot that betrays decay in his teeth. Jerks back reflexively, hits his head against the wall - tries to blink through the flash of white and struggles.

“‘ere, you filthy rat. Ain’t nobody thieves from this ‘ouse on my watch.”

And then Garrett feels it, so so cold, the blade of his sword as it presses against his thorax. The blade is turned to him, the edge sliding close - he feels the leather strain and split, and the panic that rises up is enough to consume him, blind him; he goes utterly still, knows his eyes are wide but can barely see anything, and all his senses but touch are fuzzy grey static that assaults him on all sides. Against his side, agonisingly clear, he feels the edge of the sword meet skin and then sink further, so slight that Garrett isn’t sure if the cold is just the metal, or the stinging pain of his own blood seeping out around it.

It’s between his ribs. Cutting along the long edge, not the point - the blade itself is too thick to comfortably slide through and sunder his lung or his heart, but all it takes is enough force and his bones will crack apart around it and he’ll die.

_ I’ll die. _

_ “Mistakes cost lives. Do whatever you must to make sure it’s not yours.” _

It’s with distant feeling that he realises the knife is still in his hand. Somehow, it feels even further away as he watches it lift, turn slightly, even as the guard’s eyes drop to it and realise what’s happening - in slow motion, as time winds down to nothing, and Garrett doesn’t understand why the guard doesn’t  _ stop _ him, why he just stands there and lets Garrett jam the knife point first into the hollow of his throat.

There’s a choking sound, and Garrett releases the knife as the guard’s throat convulses around it - blood wells, streams out from around the blade in deep rivulets, and then there’s hot wet flecks on his face as the guard chokes again, coughs, and Garrett wonders for a moment why spitting on him is an appropriate response - and something inside him breaks loose and abandons him, when he realises that it’s blood.

The sword slips from the guard’s grip as he staggers back one step and folds into a puddle on the floor; hands scrabble at his throat, around the knife, and lack utterly the strength to pull it out. It’s not the blood, Garrett realises, where he stands flat against the wall like he’s still being forced to it, staring down at the guard with unblinking eyes and no breath in his lungs. The guard, too, has no breath - Garrett’s punched the knife straight through his trachea, and his breathing is restricted even as blood pools downwards and fills what cavities inside him that air would normally go.

Garrett doesn’t hear the shouting around him, doesn’t hear the door slam open behind him in the mere seconds it took for him to kill, doesn’t see the flicker of dark motion that flies from the window and doesn’t even notice as the rest of the men go down around him. There’s nothing except the guard dying on the floor, and the warm line of blood along Garrett’s side, and the way the light goes out in pale brown eyes.

He sees it, the moment of death, and all at once everything ruptures open inside him.  _ I killed him. I killed him. _ Finally, Garrett stumbles away from the wall, but it’s only to lurch and falter and feel his knees slam into the floor, and then the whole world dissolves into convulsions and acid and breathless, screaming heartbeat.

By the time he can feel anything again, the room is silent, and the lights have been put out. He’s trembling, he realises, gasping in freezing cold air that sears against a raw throat, and there’s a hand on his back. A moment of panic, and he looks up and sees Master Amber’s face, drawn and tense, her eyes glittering and brow knotted tight. She’s not moving, where she touches, just quietly pressing one hand between his shoulders blades with little enough pressure that it doesn’t even hurt - and he at once wants to recoil and cling to the anchor she provides.

His hood is drawn back, and he doesn’t know where his scarf is. It doesn’t occur to him to care. “M-Master,” he begins, scrapes out past the lingering foul acridity of bile, and she shakes her head once.

“Shh. It’s okay.” It’s not okay,  _ it’s so fucking far from okay, _ but she rises to her feet, keeps her hand on his back, offers him the other one. “We need to go. Can you do that?” There’s no urgency in her voice that he can hear, and she’s quiet and soft as she speaks; there’s still that fluid gleam in her eyes, and Garrett stares at her stupidly for a long minute before he realises that it’s pain.

Looks down at her hand, and then puts his own into it. “I-I…” He struggles, as she carefully lifts him standing upright, releases his hand but keeps the touch at his back, holds him steady as he weaves on his feet. There’s no words in his brain, nothing he can translate into a response, ringing and hollow except for… “I k-killed--”

“Shh, I know, it’s okay.” Soothing, and she doesn’t step closer but her voice is, impossibly, even softer. “We need to go, Garrett. Can you do that for me?”

He doesn’t want to,  _ gods _ he doesn’t want to, but he looks back at his victim. The guard is still a pile of dead on the floor, blood and waste spilling out of him, and Garrett’s knife rises from his throat in abhorrent conquest. It spreads out through his whole body, a revolting slick feeling like he’s being coated in sewage from the inside out; his stomach clenches and he gags violently, even as the contractive pain bursts open in response. Nothing comes up - there’s nothing more he can vomit - except for strings of sticky saliva that he can’t bring himself to swallow.

Master Amber’s touch doesn’t change, neither lighter nor harder, but her thumb rubs one small circle and he hears the soft “Shh, Garrett, shh, it’s okay, don’t look back.”

There are other bodies, littering the room - five more, all clad in the red-white uniform except for one. He recognises the clothes and slack face: the Javinski patriarch, stupid enough to follow his houseguard into a fight. “M-Master,” he forces out, voice cracking, and he looks at her and feels the fear and horror claw in his throat, wonders what screams might come loose now there’s no more acid.

She shakes her head. “They’re just unconscious, Garrett, I didn’t kill them.” Understands his thoughts even though he can’t even begin to figure out how to voice them, and he looks around once more.  _ Yes, _ he sees, they’re all breathing - all but one. “We really need to go,” she murmurs, but she doesn’t make him move.

He does, though, feels the reflex kick in and isn’t fully aware of the trip back to the safehouse until he looks up and finds himself there. Everything is churning, unsteady and unreal, and he still feels like he’s been filled with something unnatural, slippery and oily, and even stepping into the room, away from the window, is like wading through deep mud and like someone else is moving his body at the same time. Manipulations of numb limbs, something he can feel without feeling, oddly nauseating and invasive.

It isn’t until he feels the sting that he notices Master Amber at his side, picking apart the cut leather just enough to see the injury. He freezes up, emotions a boiling storm in his chest that he can’t name, and there is icy fear that buzzes behind his eyes and makes him want to flee, but it’s Master Amber,  _ it’s just Master Amber, _ and she purses her lips and lets go, moves back a moment later. She doesn’t tell him to strip off and doesn’t go for any of the medical supplies, so he assumes that whatever it is that he’s bleeding, it’s not too bad.

The moment spins out, thought dissolving into nothing and feeling and the hollow cavernous weight, and he doesn’t even see her move or hear her open the chest, but she’s back what seems only a moment later, and she wraps a heavy blanket around him.

He clings to it, pulls it so tight around himself his fingers hurt, and he can’t quite even parse why. Her eyes, when she stands in front of him with a canteen, are glistening. “Garrett, can you hear me?” Ever so gentle. Like he’s sick. He nods. “I know it hurts. I know… you’re feeling horrible right now, but I need you to listen to me. It’s important, more important than anything. Is that okay? Can you do that?” Maybe he is sick. He’s so cold, even with the blanket around him, he can feel how much he’s shaking. His insides don’t feel right - everything is sore and numb and at the same time,  _ so cold, _ and there’s a searing electric pain that runs from stomach to lungs to throat.

Master Amber is asking him something. To listen. He nods again, obediently - he is her apprentice. Obedience is his obligation, and she has taught him so much, kept him safe, helped him become so strong and so fast. She is his Master. He will always do as she asks.

“You need to drink this.” She lifts something-- the canteen, unscrewing the top. It flickers in his chest, a contractive pulse, and he doesn’t want to drink anything anyone else gives him - but it’s Master Amber, she’s safe, she’s always the exception. Maybe he  _ is _ sick. She’s helped him through sickness before. His hands twitch, and she shakes her head. “Shh-- no, Garrett, keep that blanket around you. Can you drink for me?”

And it’s just his own water canteen, when she steps forward once and brings it close, and he nods. Lets her hold it to his lips and takes a mouthful. He chokes on it when he swallows, his throat raw and the taste  _ so bitter _ that for a moment the panic seizes him again - and blood swims up in his eyes, the choke and spray and spotty wetness, and he knows the taste; it’s not the water, it’s the  _ bile, _ and he can feel the easy part and give of skin and flesh and the elastic snap of cartilage as the trachea breaks under his hands, and it isn’t until his butt touches the floor that he realises he’s collapsed.

It isn’t until he feels the convulsion shudder through his chest that he realises he’s sobbing. Tears sting in his eyes, salt, and even worse when the kohl around them dissolves into the wet. There’s that hand at his back again, a gentle pressure, and this time he just clings to it, focusing on the small little circles between his shoulders while he pulls on the blanket and wishes that it did anything at all to chase off the shuddering chill.

When he manages to get a hold of himself again, the circles have stopped, but the hand is still there. He follows the sensation, uncurls just enough to see Master Amber at his side, and suddenly all he feels is the weight of guilt and failure and  _ How could she possibly want to keep training me after this? _

She removes her hand, must have felt the coil in his body, but she shifts around so she’s half in front of him again and ducks her head to meet his gaze. “It’s okay, Garrett. It’s okay, I’m not going anywhere. You’re safe.” Not going anywhere. How can she say that, when Garrett’s killed someone?  _ Thieves, not murderers, _ except he’s shoved a knife down someone’s throat, spilt blood and ended life and it’s all over him, he can  _ feel _ it, but he had to -  _ I had to-- _

“I h-had to,” it overflows, and Master Amber nods solemnly. “I- I didn’t-”

Her voice is lilting and soft. “Shh. I know. You didn’t want to hurt anyone; but you had to. He would have killed you, Garrett. You had to defend yourself.” He can only nod, this time, because she’s right,  _ she’s right, _ and it doesn’t mean a single damn thing because he killed someone, but he  **had** to - he didn’t want to die. “Do you think you can manage some more water?” she asks, holding up the canteen again.

It’s reflexive, the nod. He’ll do as she asks. And it’s easier, this time, he manages three mouthfuls before she takes it away. Even that feels heavy in his stomach, an entirely different kind of weight to the rest of his body and equally as unpleasant, but he isn’t going to complain. “That’s great, Garrett, you’re doing amazing. I’m so proud of you.” Like echoes against his thoughts, pebbles that bounce off him like he’s glass, but it’s Master Amber’s voice and he lets it soothe him.

And she stays, all through the day, while he desperately resists the urge to sleep and when he does drift into a brief daze, he’s jolted awake with the spray of blood and the sick guilt that curdles in his gut. A couple of times he has to dart away, tearing out of the blanket, but it’s just acrid liquid that comes up and each time she’s waiting with a soft word and a request to drink some more water; and he complies, and it becomes easier as the light wears on.

When he lets her bundle him into bed, after the eternity it takes him to get loose his cloak and strip off his climbing harness and loot pouches and tools and broken bow, until he’s just in his leathers and she does nothing but allow him the time, he feels marginally better. Warmer, at least, not quite so freezing.

“Wait,” she murmurs to him. He watches her while she moves around the safehouse, and he doesn’t know what it is she’s doing - can’t even begin to categorise her movements, knows that they’re familiar but can’t think long enough to remember why. Everything is bleary and hazy and he’s still cold and still sore, and he  _ must _ be sick because he hasn’t felt this awful in years. She comes back with a mug, and lets him take it in his hands this time. Her own don’t leave it, supporting his grip with her own, and the touch makes his skin tingle but he doesn’t retreat. “Drink this, is that alright?” He takes a sip - it’s sweet, some kind of tea that he’s sure she favours but can’t for the life of him remember the name of - and it’s hot. Almost too much, scorching as he swallows, but it bubbles heat to life in his chest and he takes another before he can even think. Suddenly, he needs that warmth, and it is only the tightening of her fingers over his that stops him from gulping the whole mug. “Easy, Garrett, easy. Slowly.”

He obeys, and she’s helping him drink and holding him steady at the same time, and when eventually he’s gotten through the whole mug he finally feels like he might be alive again. It’s equal parts nice and painful; the tea has chased away a lot of the cold, and he pulls the blankets around himself as Master Amber takes the mug away and sets it on the bench - leaves it there and comes back. Clinging to the warmth, he curls up in bed without thinking, the blankets tugged up to his chin and wrapped tight around him.

At the same time, the numbness is gone with it, and Garrett feels every inch the crumbling guilt of what he’s done. It feels like his body is decaying from the inside, like his bones might turn to powder at any moment, and he’d deserve it.

“It’s okay, Garrett,” Master Amber whispers, giving him a quick sweep with her eyes and nodding. “You’ve done so well. Do you think you can get some sleep? You need to rest.” And he doesn’t want to, because when he closes his eyes all he can see is the light leaving the guard’s, but he does anyway and tries not to quake with it. “Thank you, Garrett,” Master Amber murmurs. “I’m so proud of you, okay? Remember that.”

When he wakes again, she’s right there, keeping watch for him, and she greets him with another mug of tea and something like food; he doesn’t taste it, but he does as he’s asked and eats it.

Four days later, when he’s finally back to normal - except his new normal is so much heavier than his old, a weight that he knows now he will never shake - when he understands intimately the moments it seems like Master Amber has carried The City on her back she looks so tired - she sits down with him and they repair his leathers, and she delights in the new scarf he makes for himself.

And it’s not better, and he still feels the way the guard’s throat gives out at his touch, flinches at the sight of blood, and he never carries a knife again - but it’s okay.

* * *

Two years later, when Garrett is nineteen, he is forced to kill for the second time.

It is true, he finds, what Master Amber said.

It does not get easier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Ugh. Just. Ugh._
> 
>  
> 
> I love Amber so much you guys, holy shit, you have no idea - I love Amber **so fucking much.**


End file.
